New Blues Songs: Economy's Got Me By The Balls

Lunch today at work - very strange...this economic crisis has everyone by the short hairs. I honestly don't know why I still have my job. I mean, I guess I'm good at it; but what they say about advertising - the cutthroat, backstabbing, mean-spirited attitudes?

It's true.

I suppose one could use this time to write blues songs. Head to the crossroads (uh, where, between Park and 28th?) and grab a guitar, throw your head back, and yodel to whomever will listen that you can't afford the rent? That you allowed your boss to get away with that suggestive comment about your ass fitting snugly into your pants because you really had nobody else to hear it and don't want to make waves, not in this recession?


I keep hearing that the recession is over, it's over, rents are going down, we're okay. Wow - really? Nobody told me. Nobody told R. at my job, so that maybe he can stop being such a little cunt and trying to constantly get credit for my ideas when we work on a project. He's talented enough, he doesn't have to make me look like an idiot. I wish he and Lauren would work together - it would be lovely.

Picture if you will: flaming bitch and a flaming queen fighting to the death over who gets what copy over which image and who will be the one to get credit for it - if it goes well, if my inch-within-a-lawsuit boss finds it usable. Which he will; they are both good. I insinuated they were assholes, but not that they aren't good at what they do.

I have a friend who is an opera singer. I took singing lessons when I was young...I used to want to sing. I also took ice-skating, and even clarinet. I've always been good at what I did, never worried about it. I make good money, never worried about it. Dated and if it didn't work out, well...I'd get over it and never really worried about it.

Now, I'm worried about it. God, if I have to move back upstate...I don't know what I'd do. I'd find a way, but...it's strange that we claw and scratch to be who we think we are, who we think is the penultimate of what is "correct" to be; good at your job, making a good living, or at least good enough to live in New York, which is saying a lot.

I walked past this woman today, homeless; it's summer now going into fall, so the weather is at least decent, and she looks like she's eating. But how quickly does one have to fall to get to where...say I am (which isn't that high up off the ground) to where she finds herself? And when people say "well, they probably have an addiction problem," I think to myself - well, FUCK, wouldn't YOU, if you didn't have a job? But I guess that's a chicken or the egg kind of thing...and there is a difference between that chicken and that egg...but either way, she is living on a cardboard box at night, alone, and people look the other way when she asks for help.

I pray things get better.