I wake up, again, at Mel's place. I am the only one here. I have no job except for two free lance gigs. I have friends in the city that I haven't seen much of, or not at all. I've developed a skill that is both unfortunate and accidental of annoying the hell out of my girlfriend that I'm doing my best to suppress. Bad thoughts lurk in the murky waters of my mind like schools of piranhas. Somewhere out there my mother is nervous and unsure (today she is in South Carolina). I have a brother back home from England who thinks I'm prone to irresponsibility and wants my mother to get tougher on me (he thinks painting my room is a waste of time for someone without a job). I have a brother in Los Angeles who probably reads these posts and thinks I'm in need of a good old-fashioned "whip the kid into shape" talk (he more than anyone else sees my insecurities).
And almost 800 miles away, my father is losing hope.
I've applied for jobs. I've begun writing. Now is the time to be persistent.
I think of myself as shrimping. Shrimping is something I've done with my friend Scott on the beaches of Hilton Head outside South Carolina. It involves tossing a net out into a channel of water where the shrimp swim very quickly in crowded teams. You have to make sure the net is cast out in such a way that it makes a circle; if the net makes a half-circle, then it's folded and not effective. Once you cast it out, you let a moment go by for it to sink and then your quickly reel it in, pulling the cords to make the net tighten and flow back, like you're hauling in a jelly fish by the tentacles. Sometimes you catch fish, sometimes you catch crabs, often times hermet crabs. You hope to get dozens of shrimp for you to pick out and snatch up from the sand to toss in a bucket before the local sea gulls swoop in for a steal.
But shrimping is a bad comparison. Shrimping involves giving up quickly, for once you reel the net in, if you don't have any shrimp, you recast the net. But searching for jobs requires persistence. You need to let the net sink, and you need to reinforce the cast and attract the shrimp. Shrimping doesn't work like that. Shrimping involves hitting the right spot at the right time. It's not about attracting shrimp. It's about attacking a spot where they happen to be congregated.
Looking for jobs is a much more sophisticated game, like tiring a bull. No, like picking up a girl. No, maybe not even that. There's an economic science to the art of tracking down a job. You have to anticipate that the employer is busy, and the more persistent you are, the more likely you come into view, but with diminishing effects, because you increase the hazard of annoying the employer.
Today I go to paint, apply for more jobs, and work on my book. My book is about a girl who loses a father and then is faced with a decision between two men, one of whom is the opposite of her father and the other who strangely reminds her of her father. I've written two chapters, and then stopped for a month and a half, and now I am horrified by what I wrote. I need to clean it up. The book begins with a eulogy, a poorly written eulogy. I'm not sure if I like it.
I'm a writer. I want feedback. I want you to tell me how I can improve my writing. I want to be better. I want to be great.
That's what this whole year's about.
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