Nothing profound tonight, just an idle thought.

In a recent post, I noted that the girl who answered the phone and took my order at the Chinese restaurant sounded absolutely precious. And since my jobs as of late have required me to answer a lot of phones and make a lot of calls and leave a lot of messages, I wonder if anyone hangs up the phone after hearing my voice and says, "Wow, that guy sounded pretty cute!"

I doubt it.

I really did. Like the titular character of Caren Lissner's Carrie Pilby, I spent a good part of the day doing things that I enjoy. And I think I'm going to try to do that more often.

Granted, the day didn't start off so great -- not that it was awful, but it was something of a chore for me to pull myself out of bed (even at 10:30 AM) to get ready for work at the comic book store. And while I do like the store, and working there isn't so bad, after a busy 5-day week I decided that I could use the entire weekend to rest and work on my various projects (Scary-Crayon, fiction writing, drawing, etc.) and that my Saturdays were worth more to me than $20 and a 15% discount on comic books (which I rarely buy anyway). So I gave my resignation notice, offering to work next week before calling it quits, but later I ran into the store owner and she said it would be pointless to have me work next week, so that's that. So if anyone reading this lives in the area and ever wants to hang with me on the weekend, I'm free to do so without calling it in and taking off. (more...)

I was planning to write another Scary-Crayon piece tonight -- I've been digging the every other day update thing -- but I didn't get back to the house until after 7 PM because I take two buses to get back from work and THE FUCKING FIRST BUS NEVER SHOWED UP. After waiting two hours for it -- two fucking hours! -- someone was nice enough to give me a ride to the next station, but of course by then I'd missed the bus I usually take and the next one as well, and the third bus was very late, so I ended up waiting another 30 minutes at the station for it to come. (You NYC folks don't know how lucky you are to have reliable public transportation.) When I finally walked through the door around 7:20 PM I was exhausted. Then suddenly it was 10:00 PM.

I fucking hate my life.

In other news, today I got my first piece of comment spam! Pretty funny stuff, I've gotta say. "You have done a very nice job with your website, I enjoy reading the various posts and opinions of your other visitors. I do Home finance..." HOW RELEVANT! Thanks for the entertainment, Mr. Refinance.

Last night I fired off a couple more cover letters and resumes, as well as a submission to one magazine and a few article proposals to another. And tonight, I submitted a short story to Flesh & Blood magazine. Let's hope the 24th time's a charm!

By the way, for those who thought the first paragraph of yesterday's post vaguely familiar, I was more/less channeling Illyria's words in "Underneath" ("Angel" Season 5, Episode 17). Here's the relevant excerpt:

It's too small. It's too small. I can't breathe. I can't live with these walls. I can't breathe. There's no room for anything real. ... I should gut you where you stand. You challenged me. There's not enough space to open my jaws. My face is not my face. I don't know what it will say.

Ja!

I've been pretty exhausted these last few days. Frazzled. Out of sorts. Can't take much more. I've been spending a good chunk of my time here searching the employment sections of craigslist.org and various NYC papers looking for positions in NYC. I put in for one at a local university the other day -- we'll see how that goes. But I'm suffocating in this life. I'm trapped in a box and the sides are collapsing and soon I'll be flat and there's no room for me to open my jaws. It's too much of too little and I can't bloody take much more. ANYWAY. (more...)