Never Enough

Pic of the day:  Lost in the Storm, by Richard Ansdell

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With despair, true optimism begins: the optimism of the man who expects nothing, who knows he has no rights and nothing coming to him, who rejoices in counting on himself alone and in acting alone for the good of all.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Characterizations of Existentialism

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The end is nigh!…  or at least personally closer than it appeared before I woke up this morning at any rate.  I got news that I had about 30 working days left at my job some time in August, I don’t remember the day to be honest.  The reason I had only 30 days left was because the place I work at gives non permanent employees a maximum of 128 working days per year to work.  This keeps them from being a serious threat to the job security of the permanent employees, as I recall.

Well today I went through my days with a fine tooth comb.  And when I say went through my days I mean went through my total hours and extrapolated the amount of days I had worked from them.  If the number isn’t exact, it is at the very least close.  A paycheck with 35.75 hours on it meant I worked 5 days that pay period, 60 hours meant 8 days and so on.  According to that metric, I have been paid for a total of 120 days.

Meaning I have 8 days of work left on this particular job.  But it gets better.  I worked 3 days last week, and have one day on the schedule this week.  Meaning at best I have 5 days left, 4 if you count next Tuesday.

Did I mention that because I measured hours and not listed work days that my numbers may be off? Oh good.

Well, this is how I asked them to do it. To give me as many days worked as possible up front.  And I asked them to do it that way for a reason, and it is a pretty basic one.  I need as much money as I can get, as this is my only job.  It does me no good to work one or two days a week and barely squeak by.  I need to work every possible day I can and get as much money in the coffers as is possible.

Not that it would be a lot, but it is the difference between having enough money to keep food on the table until I can find another job (or until next year comes around and I can maybe get back in temping where I am now) or linger, just barely making enough to live, or more likely not making enough to live but keep working in drips and drabs.

A quick end is preferable to a slow one, I guess.

And as much as this is the way that I asked things to be done, it still feels like having a scab ripped off of a wound.  It hurts like hell and I am not in the least happy about it.  I had hoped I would impress these people enough that I would get a permanent job.  But the list is full, they don’t need anyone, so I am flat out of luck that way.  Hopes crushed.  I had hoped after I found out that the list was full that by sending out resumes that I would be able, to use an oft used term “hit the ground running” and make a seamless transition from one job to another without a break in between.  I’ve sent out the resumes.  Crushed again.  No one has bitten yet.

Yet.

I will keep trying because I have to, because I have no choice.  There is no success without effort, and I have been giving it my best for quite a while.  Like flotsam and jetsam I float along on the currents of the job market, pushed this way and that by forces beyond my control, but with the tide, with every new job opportunity I return to try to make landfall, trying to get that full time job, claw my way onto safe dry ground again after years of being adrift.  For everything I do, I feel like it is never enough.  I do everything I can do, same thing I have done for years on end.  It’s all I can do.

And it is insanity to do the same thing over and over again and expect different results.  But it is the only thing to do, I must wait for the world to change, for some outside force to alter it’s course and come to me.  I can only do what I do, send out resumes and hope, dress my best, put my bravest face and biggest smile forward and persevere, keep on keeping on.

Hope springs eternal.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

Nothing Permanent

Pic of the day:  8 Views of Omi – #7. Evening Glow In Seta by Utagawa Hiroshige

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In the old dramas it was love that had to be sacrificed to painful duty. In the modern instance the sacrifice is at the shrine of what William James called “the Bitch Goddess, Success.” Love is to be abandoned for the stern pursuit of newspaper notoriety and dollars.

Aldous Huxley, Do What You Will (1928)

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I sent an e-mail to my boss late this morning asking him if there was any work this week.  Normally when I do that he responds pretty quickly.  It usually takes him about an hour to get back to me.  But not today.  I still have not heard back from him, and it has been more than11 hours since I sent that e-mail.

But I am getting close to being at the end of my 128 total days at the job(that is the contract length,) I am wondering whether he even cares at this point.  If I only have a few more days left, and to be honest I don’t know how many exactly I have left, I wonder whether he will go out of his way like he had previously to get work for me, and the other guys like me who are running short on days.

It could also be that he doesn’t have anything, or that he simply didn’t have time to answer it.  Regardless, it gives me pause to think about how little success I’ve had the last 3 and a half years finding full time employment.  Make that no success, because I have yet to find one.  I’ve had lots of temp jobs, a great many short term jobs, but nothing that even comes close to meeting my needs.

I’ve heard it said that to keep moving is the best way to be successful.  And I have tried. Keep updating myself, my resume, my look, my everything.  Send resumes to every place that I think might need someone with my skill set.  And what do I have to show for it?

Nothing.  Nothing permanent.  I had 5 jobs in 2011.  Only one this year, but the job has not been consistent.  2 days here, 3 days there.  No days one week, 5 days the next.  Better than nothing.  But I still don’t have medical coverage.  I still don’t have dental coverage.  No 401k.

I am still looking for that elusive full time job.  I will keep trying, I will keep looking until I find it.  In a society where the ability to make money is the most important one, I can’t stop.

I will win, doesn’t matter what the world throws against me.  I will win.  I will get that job.

My promise.  I never break a promise.

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To aspire to be superhuman is a most discreditable admission that you lack the guts, the wit, the moderating judgment to be successfully and consummately human.

Aldous Huxley,  Do What You Will

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I sent in six resumes today in an effort to get to that elusive full time job.

Spent the better part of 3 hours going through the list of jobs that I had available to me.  Many of the jobs I went through and did not respond to had one or two things in them that made them a bad fit for me.  There were jobs where they wanted a driver on top of being an art handler.  I don’t have a drivers license.  So no go.  There were others where they were asking for a college degree.  I don’t have one.  I went to college but never finished.

That sadly killed off a number of job opportunities.  But there were still plenty of good ones, and every good one got a resume.  It might not sound like much, but I tell you that six resumes sent in one day, six that I think have a serious shot of getting the job is truly a good day’s job hunting.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

29 Years Ago Today

Pic of the day:  Neptuns Pferde, by Walter Crane

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How can I tell that the past isn’t a fiction designed to account for the discrepancy between my immediate physical sensations and my state of mind?

Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

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29 years ago today, on a warm autumn day in 1983, I went to high school.  It was my first day of school for that particular year, 2 weeks later than everyone else because there was some kind of issue with my transferring from one high school to another.  I had looked at the list of classes I could take the week prior as I recall.  I had 2 possible elective classes I could take.  The first was typing.  I did not want to take typing, as I had taken it the year previous and was aggressively uninterested in it.

The second was guitar.  I had never played one prior to that.  I had played a very little bit of keyboards perhaps 6 years earlier, and still had the small sears electric keyboard and futzed with it on occasion.  I had also played the penny whistle when I was 7 years old.   For a few weeks, I remember being good at it, or more correctly stated I was told I was good by the parents who listened to me.

That didn’t make a difference in the decision for me.  I didn’t want to type,  hated writing back then, hated school to be honest.  The place bored me.  Maybe guitar would be different.

Was it ever.

On my first day, my teacher, Mr. Comachero took the time to make sure I was comfortable in class.  He tried to get me up to speed with what the class had done.  Initially I could not even get a note out of the small student guitar I was given in class.  It had a small crack in the front of it as I recall, and an extra hole that looked like someone had put something the size of a quarter through the very bottom of the front of the guitar.  After a few tries I managed to get some notes out of the thing, but nothing that could even vaguely be called music.

When the whole class played I tried to play as quietly as possible so I wouldn’t embarrass myself.  I was asked to play one thing that first class.  I couldn’t obviously, but Mr. Comachero smiled and looked me in the eye.  He said something about him knowing I couldn’t play it, but before the day was finished I would be able to.  Something like that.   I could tell he was doing everything he could.  I don’t remember if I actually learned the piece that day, but I did get it.  A few notes from the song “little brown jug” as I recall.  The man did everything he could to get that song snippet in my head.

When he was focusing on other students, i took the time to look around the class.  In the classroom, there were a few curious looking…notes around the top of the chalkboard.  I had no idea what they were.  I didn’t ask what they were.  But as I looked at them I realized that there were 6 lines on each of the notes, and 6 strings on the guitar.

The people in the class were all cool.  They were new to me, as was I to them.  I thought it was amazing that people in class actually paid attention to each other and help each other learn.  It was about the most positive experience I’d ever had in a classroom, and the teacher not only allowed it, he encouraged it.  I didn’t know teachers could be good people like that.

At the end of the first days class, as I was leaving I did something I had never done with any other class.  I thanked my teacher.  And meant it.

29 years ago today, I began a musical journey that I am happily still on.  I play almost every day, and every day I get better as a player.  I would not still be on this journey if it weren’t for my first guitar teacher, Mr. Comachero.  So thank you, sir.  The gift you gave me is still giving, and I am eternally grateful.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night

Today Is Good Enough

Pic of the day:  Paradise by Dieric Bouts (1450)

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On a sudden open fly
With impetuous recoil and jarring sound
Th’ infernal doors, and on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder.

John Milton, Paradise Lost

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My dreams aren’t big dreams.  I don’t dream about big things.  I dream about having a full time job.  About having medical coverage.  About having a place to live big enough for my wife and I and all our stuff.  About not having to travel and hour and a half a day every day just to work.  About feeling safe at home.   About making enough money to think about a future for my wife and I rather than just today.

Tomorrow is a dream I cannot afford to dream.  Today is the only important day in my life.  Can’t afford to do it otherwise.

I don’t really mind though.  My life has been like that for as long as I remember.  Today is good enough when it’s all you have.  While I dream about having a full time job that doesn’t mean that that isn’t a big dream.  It is.  That may be a small thing to you, but when you don’t have the full time job, getting the full time job is the big dream.

My father had dreams.  He dreamed of success for his kids and himself.  He dreamed of a better life for his wife and his kids.  I don’t know what else he dreamed of.  We never had that conversation when he was alive.  But I know he loved me and I know I loved him.  That was enough.  I would have given him more had I had more to give. But I couldn’t.  I’m not successful, but I work hard, give everything I have.  That has to be enough because it’s all I have.

I have tried all my life to be a good worker, make a decent salary, but most importantly be a good man.

That’s as much as I can do.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.

In A Fog

Pic of the day:  On the Saco, by Albert Bierstadt

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To withdraw is not to run away, and to stay is no wise action when there is more reason to fear than to hope. ‘Tis the part of a wise man to keep himself today for tomorrow, and not venture all his eggs in one basket. And though I am but a clown, or a bumpkin, as you may say, yet I would have you to know I know what is what, and have always taken care of the main chance…

Miguel de Cervantes,  Don Quixote de la Mancha (Sancho Panza)

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I’ve been walking around in a fog for the last few days.  After spending several days last week and this week traveling, I am back home.  The odd thing being I was also at home for part of each of those days.  There was a smoke condition in Das Rhino Hacienda, and because the Fire dept. and the electric company both could not find the source of the problem, they decided to cut the power to the house.

Which makes us safe but also makes life very much less liveable.  I was not really surprised and but truly annoyed to find out just how dependent I am on electricity in my everyday life at home.  I could have eaten every day and stayed here at home sweet apartment, but I would have been relegated to near darkness most of the time.

My cell phone, a necessary link to the outside world to both job and wife couldn’t charge.  So I needed to find a place to do that.  The computer, my main form of news gathering and entertainment was obviously not an option.  The fridge was down.  No TV, no microwave oven, no coffee maker.

No coffee maker? I thought that with a shudder.

That one almost killed me, just thinking it.  Life without coffee is only slightly less crazy than life without oxygen.  It may be possible to live without coffee elsewhere in the universe, but it’s not possible on my fucking world.

So I could either sit in the dark, alone (my wife was 3,000 miles away) with no coffee, no means of communication with my wife and job and with food rotting in the freezer and no way to save it, or, find someone with whom to entrust my stuff, not to mention charge my damn phone,and maybe stay there much of the time as well, and get my coffee fix.

I chose the latter.  (Thanks, Mom!)

Happy that I did, made my life a lot easier.  Even had a place to put my freezer items, saved me a boatload of money doing that. (And mom’s a damn good cook, too.  Better cook than me some ways, and I pride myself on being a good cook.)

After over a week of running around like a fucking madman, I am back living home. I have slept in my own bed twice.  Drank my own coffee by the gallon.

Bliss.

And yet…

I walk downstairs every day, and I tell you I still smell the smoke, and to me smoke means fire.  I asked the wife if she smelled it.  She said no.  I called the landlord yesterday, and had him check it out.  Nada.  I love my wife and respect her opinion.  That second however, the landlord’s opinion, normally doesn’t hold much weight.  Seeing how he lives here as well, he has a vested interest in keeping the place from burning the fuck down.  His whole life, like mine, is here.  So if he said no now after smelling  it when he first found out about it (he was out of town when this first happened and didn’t arrive until the day after) I believe him.

But I still smell it.  Drives me fucking nuts.

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Fall arrives in less than 12 hours, 10:49 am New York time as I recall.  Best weather of the year coming this way. Nice.

I love autumn on Staten Island, especially living near a park.  Especially the park I grew up near.  I know all the paths, all the shortcuts in the park, and they are beautiful in fall.  The leaves wont really start to turn in earnest for another 2 or 3 weeks, and the color will peak around mid November.  If ever there were a place to celebrate nature in the confines of an otherwise shitty city like New York, Cloves lake park in autumn is it.  And as the fair weather begins to dissipate, the fair weather fans will disappear, leaving the park to us more ardent nature lovers.

I’ll be there every day that I can possibly can.  Nature is a great place to recharge the batteries.  And mine could use a serious recharge.

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That’s it from here, America.  G’night.