stardustcboy's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ...A Short While Ago I Was This Low... Unemployment, Day #65 � February 20, 2004:* �I wanted to record some of my thoughts today. My extended period of unemployment leaves me with a lot of time to contemplate, too much time in many respects. In any case, I figure this will allow me to simply copy/paste what I have written here into my digital diary when I finally have a more continuous connection to the web. In the beginning, I viewed my sudden unemployment as a sort of extended holiday. Black Ops had decided, in its infinite mercy, to lay off a large group of people before Christmas. I, your dear narrator, being one of the unfortunate 16 to be laid off in what eventually became a perverse orgy of employee cut backs at Black Ops took to my sudden increase in spare time happily. Since it fell so close to a nearly two weeklong holiday period, searching for new employment opportunities was somewhat fruitless. Many of the companies were closed, and those that weren�t didn�t have plans on hiring new labor until the turn of the New Year. So, that in mind, I decided I would enjoy some time to my own; and take the opportunity to update my reel with new-and-improved animations and artwork and work on doing some things for myself. When the New Year came, I returned to my search for work with renewed vigor. Knowing that soon money would dry up and I would be set upon by difficult financial times. There were a few interviews here and there, but no one seemed to be hiring for another couple of months. The dread began to set in and as the end of January approached I felt a growing anxiety over rent. Thankfully, G came up with the funds to pay for rent and I extended my search into the non-videogame sector, looking into local wage jobs at Starbucks, Sav-On Pharmacy, Border�s Bookstore, and Hollywood Video. My efforts were coming up fruitless. Wage jobs didn�t seem to want someone with an extensive resume of professional experience, and companies in the video-game industry just weren�t ready to hire yet. I began to notice a deepening and overwhelming depression begin to set in that persists even to this day. I don�t think I have ever been so utterly fucked before in all my life. There is an intense feeling of isolation and solitude that I feel. Today, as in every other dreary day that has come before it, I am once again trapped in the cold, gray, shadowy confines of my apartment in the valley. Wholly disconnected from the world around me. No newspaper, no television, no internet � it is like being a prisoner whose only way of marking the endless and monotonous procession of days is by rudimentary chalk marks upon the wall of his dank dungeon cell. Like a prisoner, my hope for escape or pardon has dwindled with the passing of days and now I accept my term with the grim and foreboding heart of a damned man. I have 83 DVD�s, each one I have watched at least 3 times. I�ve beat 4 videogames on my Playstation2 and have replayed and beat 2 games. My mind is an unending drone of worry and sadness, and I have reached a point where no distraction is great enough to rid it of the insidious noise of doubt and anxiety. One movie in my collection, I have watched more than any other, in most part because it is just such a fantastic horror film, but in a small part because I identify with its main character. The Shining is probably one of Kubrick�s greatest achievements. Don�t get me wrong, 2001: A Space Odyssey was a remarkable epic in its own right much like A Clockwork Orange; but there is such a potent and lasting thrill to his adaptation of Stephen King�s novel. I sometimes feel like Jack Torrance, a man racked with the stress of unemployment and regret of broken dreams and lost opportunities locked away in the far-off, forlorn, snow-covered peaks of the Rocky Mountains. Consumed by the monotony of the day-to-day routine, wishing only to write, to pursue something that has always been a dream unfulfilled only to slip slowly away into madness. I too wish only to achieve my dreams, to create some grand epic that lasts through the great swells of time, a monolith to my life and achievement that will speak to future generations. Yet I am isolated and alone with only the dull chatter of my own thoughts and fears. Each day bleeds its routine into the other and I feel that there is no escaping. I morbidly contemplate my own demise. Hoping that some ailment or folly will end my life sentence and carry me on to another life that I can live better. There are moments I wish to hack at my prison with the sharp edge of an axe. Strike at the doors and walls and rip them away to reveal the world beyond. This however, would serve nothing except to reveal the unending concrete labyrinth of the city beyond and reinforce the feelings of entrapment and estrangement. Its funny too, how people try to help with words of advice and encouragement. They don�t know how much pain that this causes and how their cheery little diatribes and banal offerings of advice sting me to the core. �Why don�t you try working for Disney?� �You could always send you resume to Pixar.� �There�s a job fair in LA you should go to, Sony and Dreamworks will be there.� �You should apply at Starbucks or Hollywood Video, at least you�ll be making money.� �Why don�t you just start your own company?� They speak as though it was as easy as 1-2-3, as though all I have to do is just walk up to the president of the company and say �Hire me.� If it were so fucking easy, then you�d think I would have been there already. That I�d be sitting pretty in my office in northern California, working on the latest and greatest upcoming Pixar film, collecting my ample pay, and living happily ever after. Sadly, it�s not that easy; and sadly, it seems that finding a job is only going to take time. Now I merely just want to put my fist into the mouth of those who deem it their sole responsibility to dole out job advice; and plant a firm kick into the stomach of those that vomit their cheery condolences and sappy encouragements into my face. I�m sick of talking about it to people. As soon as I say I�m without work I get the great honor of sitting through their piss stream of advice while I stand with a plastic smile and an insincere nod praying that they�d just shut up and let me alone. My isolation is only exacerbated by three simple facts. The first being that I have no vehicle with which to escape the torment and confines of my apartment. Secondly, I have no access to that modern convenience known as the �information super-highway� or the Internet. Third, and finally, I have no money. Living without these is like being a cripple or an invalid. Los Angeles is designed specifically for the avid motorist. The freeways, highways, and streets are all constructed to make the morning and evening commutes as fast and efficient as possible for the LA working class. Without a car, you are forced to take the oh-so-wonderfully ineffective public transportation system. Public transportation in LA is far from being an exact science. Buses break down, traffic slows the already snail-like pace of working bus routes; and a journey that would take 20 minutes by car via the freeway becomes a 2-hour nightmare. It�s nigh impossible to make any appointment on time without giving yourself a 2.5 to 3 hour lead. Not only that, but the MTA has recently changed the fare on their buses. As recently as last December, you could take the bus for $1.60. This fee would allow you a trip on the bus and a transfer to another line. Now, however, it costs $1.25 per ride, NO TRANSFERS. You could spend $3.00 on an all day pass, which would give you unlimited rides around the city. Unfortunately, there are certain areas of LA that are governed by different bus lines like Santa Monica�s �Big Blue Bus� and Culver City�s �Green Bus�. With the MTA�s new fare system, these lines are no longer accepting MTA transfers so you have to pay for the ride when you make the change over. All in all, this system only makes me want to stay in all the more; and deepens the exquisite loneliness that I feel day in and day out. It�s funny, that in our modern society, the Internet has so rapidly become a fixture of modern convenience. If not having a car is like not having legs, and then not having the Internet is like not having any arms or ears. Communications that would normally happen in a matter of seconds via quick e-mail exchanges now stretch over a period of days, as I must go through friends who have Internet access either at home or at work. Getting people to call you instead of e-mailing is nearly impossible; and when you tell them you are without the convenience of e-mail and Internet, they respond with such incredulousness and disbelief. �You don�t have internet?!? Isn�t that a bit difficult? Isn�t it strange that you work in a technology field and don�t have this vital aspect?� Well of course it is you dumb twat. But you see, Internet is solely accessible to people who have what I like to refer to as �money�. This �currency� is what allows people all sorts of basic freedoms, like a �car� and �digital cable� and �internet access�. Unfortunately, due to the fact that I am �unemployed� I don�t have mass amounts of this �money� coming in to support such niceties; and I must rely on old-fashioned methods of communication. Like, say for example, the �telephone� or �mail�. Sooner or later I will have to resort to sending telegraphs to people, and eventually will only be able to make smoke signals from the top of Fryman Park in the Hollywood Hills. Which leads me finally to the most acute cause of my stress, worry and isolation. Money. Without it, everything else fails. No money, no ability to pay for the car. No money, no ability to pay for cellular phones. No money, no connection to the Internet. No money, no escape from the never-ending torment of my shitty existence. Everything in life revolves around money; and I have neither a viable source of, nor a viable stockpile of that all-important resource. I�m at a point now, where even the small things are out of my financial reach. Cigarettes, milk, sugar, eggs, bus fare, toothpaste, deodorant, razor blades, fucking ice cream are all beyond my current budget of $0.00. Collecting unemployment is out of the question. I owe $600.00+ in overpaid compensation and cannot collect any more unemployment until that debt is settled. As you can see by simple math, you cannot subtract $600.00 from $0.00 and end up with a positive result. So when the last of my money was spent mid-January that was it. The end. The bottom of my wallet, so-to-speak. So here I am absolutely destitute, with one foot over the threshold of my apartment in fear that at months end I will not have anything to help G pay for rent and we will be evicted and put out on the streets. I am at a point now, to use a metaphor, where I am treading water in the great wide sea of money and the sharks of financial ruin circle ever closer as the money from a deep financial wound in my side only ensures that when they do finally descend upon me, their vicious and greedy teeth will only be driven to frenzy. You see, $600.00+ to unemployment isn�t the least of my worries; there are so many others now, an almost insurmountable number that just seems to keep growing. Just when I think I�m getting back on track, the carpet is pulled beneath my feet and I am again treading water. So now all I am left with is blind hope and faith. Hope that this will eventually turn around for me and that I�ll survive this little episode; and faith that I will be the better for it and that the pay-off will at least partially compensate for all the lost time. I wouldn�t consider myself an extremely devout, pious or religious type; but I pray. I pray every day that this weight will lift and that I can get my car back and pay some of these obligations. I pray that this period will open up to greater and unforeseen opportunities and changes for the better. I pray that I can once again taste freedom and the shackles that bind me to this concrete and drywall cage in the vast concrete labyrinth will spring open and release me. The past two years, through no one�s fault but my own, I have been stripped of all material possessions. I�ve lost my car, I�ve lost my job, I�ve lost my one beloved pet. I ask God, if there is such a being, what else he will take from me. My health? My family? My friends? Surely without these I am doomed and the way things have been going, I only await the loss with a sort of numb detachment. What else can I expect? I certainly have grown weary of expecting the best. I�m tired of waiting and hoping for positive outcomes when it seems that life insists on only throwing me the bones of dissolution and disenchantment. So what else can I expect? I wasn�t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I can�t go running to mommy and daddy for a hand out. I�ve learned that you make your life what it is; and from where I am I don�t feel that I don�t have much to make. So like a prisoner on death row, I count the days before I feel the final blow of the executioner�s axe, and death sets me free. *this was when i was feeling the worst...it still amazes me how things just turn around sometimes. despite the bitter and acidic nature of this particular piece; you can see that i am standing here today. HEY! we all have our moments of weakness! ;-) LiCkS!! ~B-) 8:36 p.m. - 2004-04-19 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||