I am going stir-crazy. Climbing the walls. Bored to tears. I’ve read my back log of New Yorkers, Tin House, Granta, and Money Magazine. I spent hours in bed yesterday, thinking the big questions: What am I doing with my life? Why am I here? What is going to become of me? I’ve recently accepted that I do not know what is going to happen.
I do know that I need to get a job. Not strictly for financial reasons, but because I need something to do. This feeling usually takes a month to set in, but it’s taken less than two weeks since I left the playhouse.
So I’m pounding the virtual pavement again, making the usual round of phone calls. I’ve looked at jobs that I wouldn’t normally touch with a barge pole. Companies I’ve never heard of, in fly-over states, which offer weekly rates that probably don’t even equal minimum wage. Argh.
I took off my St. Christopher medal for the first time in a month. It feels odd. I think that he’s becoming one of my favorite saints. More optimistic than Jude, less arty than Genesius, and less verbose than Augustine… I do travel often. I asked the nun at the religious bookstore where I bought the medal about the de-listing of St. Christopher. She told me that we just have to take him on faith. Luckily, I didn’t laugh until after I got out of the store.
I took on an ambitious project this week: a fairisle hat knit in the round. It started as an adaptation of a Rowan Big Wool pattern, worked at a much smaller gauge, but that was quickly abandoned. I’ve never done fairisle before. The ease is surprising, though it isn’t as mindless as my usual projects. The hat is goose shit green and slate blue, with ear flaps.
I got a phone call from my friend Bob at last. We’re playing permanent phone tag. He left a charming, rambling message and I responded in kind. He’s at the playhouse for the rest of the season. It’s a living, I guess.
I celebrated my friend Harlie’s birthday, with very short notice, on Monday. We met at the diner, neither of us feeling any pain. I was clad in a neon pink wig, bubble gum pink Burberry knock-off raincoat, and $6 worth of vintage jewelry. A couple of gentlemen mistook me for a lady-of-the-evening as I waited for Harlie, which was très amusant. I was standing on the corner at the time.
Harlie recently had a party at her apartment, which is one of many recent parties to which I’ve not been invited. I think the last party that I attended was the one that I threw last July. Maybe I’m predestined to a life of Saturday nights at home with the Sunday Times.