What Colors the Steel Sky Blue

At first it is great, with my severance in my bank account, and all the time I could not have before while I had a real job, I was in heaven.

Typical days consisted of waking up at 10 am if I felt like being more productive thay day. I do not know what it is about the morning hours; it seems if anythingt is going to get done in a day, they seem to get done in the morning hours --perhaps mostly because we are to sleepy to realize that we're supposed to be putting off these tasks in the first place.

I would wake up and have my breakfast in front of the TV. One egg yolk, 4 egg whites, two pieces of toast, glass of green tea and a small glass of orange juice stood on the dark brown coffee table like an odd group of cattle preparing to jump off for their freedom.

One by one they would dissapear from the plates, then the plates would clank as they turned into a stack in the living room. Some people get sloppy when they're unemployed. The opposite seems to happen to me. I become the anal king of the world. The dishes soon found their places in the dishwasher --like passengers pouring into an early morning ferry to Manhattan. Soon the diswasher would be on, humming its rhythmic swish that might one day inspire a dance named the dishwasher. As water whirled around my dirty dishes like the whirling dervishes, I sat down at my only couch to fill out the job applications for that day.

Each morning, I would re-run all my job searches and check to see if any new positions became available since 4 am last night. There would be several per day and they kept me busy for 1-2 hours every morning.

This was your typical mix of job postings: positions I am way too qualified for, others that are so right for me that it's wrong, and finally those I am way underqualified for. For every acronym I knew, there seemed to be three more I needed to know. For every year of experience I had in one thing, I was required a certificate in another. To paraphrase Barbie, "Job hunting was HARD!"

At first I was mass-applying to everything, sending thirty to sixty resumes a day to jobs all over the place. After I attended the job hunting workshop I slowed down a little and I focused on quality applications sent for positions that I have a very good chance of getting. This approach worked better for me. I got some calls but still I was not getting interviews, I was not getting offers. It just was not happening for me.

In an effort to preserve my sanity, I assumed my backup job title for the rest of my time in New York City, a painter. I started to introduce myself as a painter to people. You would be surprised what a big difference it makes to switch from calling yourself an internet consultant to a painter. Suddenly there was more attention paid to me. Being a painter meant, I was creative, strange, and perhaps dangerous.

It was all fine and well but I also was not very good at marketing myself as a painter. I visited galleries all over town, introducing myself, showing my portfolio, meeting gallery owners, their minions and their lovers. Still the responses I was getting were less than enthusiastic.

At a time when I managed to fail at everything I attempted, it suddenly dawned on me that I was probably half-responsible for the miserable outcomes. All my life, when I am not watching, this other side of me has been secretly sabotaging everything. It is almost as if I introduce myself to people and immediately move onto making a fool of myself with this stand up act routine that only comes across as self-effacing. Well maybe, if I was in Istanbul, that act might elicit some form of recognition and perhaps in time even gather quite a group of fans. But here? in New York City? This was the worst place to get my self-effacing mask on -- and it was glued to my face during the unemployment months.

The morning would wrap up with the applications sent to that one way trip to nowhere. Many like passengers departing on a condemned ship never returned and were never heard of. Most days I had lunch at home: chicken breast, rice and vegetables. Some days I felt the need to get out earlier, so I left around noon to have lunch at a restaurant near by.

I frequented the Lemon Leaf on 3rd Avenue, St. Marx Cafe on St Mark's, Telephone Bar on 3rd Avenue, and countless pizza joints on 1st and 3rd Avenues.

Most days I lunched alone. I guess I could have called a friend or two but I feel so much more at ease when I am by myself. I would sit there waiting for my lunch in that raw Manhattan Spring with its brisk breeze and burning sun doodling away in my notepad like a crazy artist I wasn't.

Afternoon usually was spent browsing the stores and going back forth between absolutely indulgent purchases and others not made because of guilt. I think I still managed to part with 20-50 dollars a day at the very least because of these mini sprees. I returned home late in the afternoon with all the killings of the day. There was however little time to enjoy these trophies. I had to change into my gym clothes and rush off to the gym to make it to the 7 pm showing of the "lifting heavy things and putting them back down." The crew at the gym changed by the hour. I like the 7 pm crowd, they were easier on the eyes, and they had lives, and still they were nice people.

After the gym came the dinner and perhaps watched a DVD. Then I chatted on the computer for a while. During this period, I became completely addicted to Yahoo Messenger and spent endless hours talking to strangers all over the US on just about anything ranging from dating to weight training to politics to foreign travel. The greatest thing about online chat is it allows a person to socialize without going through the angst of being there with the real people. So in this sense, chat is the sterilized, pausterized, and homogenized version of daily social life. No wonder there's so much comfort in it.

Extended exposure to chat life however has been proven to create allergic reactions to daily social situations --so one must always exercise moderation when engaging in an online life. Yeah right, like that will happen.