Well. I just found out that I am still unemployed. I'm trying not to be down about it, but it's real hard when your throat is still a tattered mess from the Gorgonzolan Mutant Flu of Evil. I'm trying to keep this in perspecive, like ... the universe is merely biding its time till it gives me the perfect job that I'll be happy in for years to come, or at least a job that will lead to that kind of employment happiness.

Then again, I may just permanently be an also-ran.

In other news, I turned in my short story, the one that if I haven't abolutely botched everything up I'll get published with. I'm really happy about that, but it's not a full time job so it's not as sunny as it really should be. I guess I'm just a die-hard pessimist.

I'm hoping that with the new year comes a better job market. I just don't know how it'll turn out, honestly. So far the year's been half great, half skanky. The great half is that I got to go home for the holiday and just hang out with my folks, and that later this week I'll be having lunch with a friend of mine in the comic book industry. The skanky part is that I have Mongolian Brain Fry Fever, my landlords are deciding to expand their apartment, into our apartment, of course, so we gotta be out of here by 4/30, and I still have no job. Moving ain't cheap, folks, and it's even less cheap when you have to pay a broker to find you a decent place to live.

I like roller coasters, but life's been enough of one already. I just want a job. That's all I want. And I don't want it to be Kinko's, or a temp thing. Temping is what I'll start doing next week, and Kinko's is what I'll be doing if everything else in the world fails, which doesn't look too unrealistic to me right now. Someone somewhere needs a proofreader who can write and edit in English and Spanish, has an active imagination, can coerce even the most jaded Macintosh computers into behaving properly, can trick tape libraries into sending important news tapes to departments that have been banned from library use forever, drive celebrities' cars across town in Manhattan rush hour traffic, defuse editorial department on the verge of self destruction, write grant proposals on behalf of non-profit corporations, salvage the dissertation and calm the frayed nerves of a desperate and homicidal PhD student with a bad procrastination streak, and reasonably explain how an internal combustion engine works.

Holy crap, I really am useless.

Maybe I should just chuck it all and get an Associate's degree in accounting.

Yeah, right.

Well, world, this is your last chance. Of course it isn't, I'm just one human being agains an entire planetary system, really, but I'm making my ultimatum and you can't stop me. Except with a power outage. But you wouldn't do that because in truth you don't hate me, you just like to watch me panic and run around like a headless chicken. Or maybe you're amused by the drivel I write when I'm horribly depressed and can't talk because my throat is grated cheese.

My point, however, is this.

I've got friends, oh Mr. Universe (not the beefcake competition). And when I'm feeling particularly like compost they're there for me, even if I have to chuck in the towel and relocate to Georgia.

...

Okay, I'm just going to shut the hell up right now. As I was writing this, an e-mail came in from an HR department in a company I'd chew my own nose off to work for.

Yes sir, Mr. Universe, sir, I'm ready and willing to go to work. And I'm willing to shut up and have a little faith this time, too.