1557 Noe St., San Francisco

The most pressingly frustrating thing that is characterizing this period of my life, which I’m hoping means only this Summer, is that I don’t have a job and I don’t have a strategy for finding one. I did go to a job fair on Tuesday and I signed up at a temp agency and I’m hoping they will call me sometime next week. If they don’t, I have no idea what’s going on.

Actually, the weather qualifies as a close second to the most pressingly frustrating thing characterizing this period of my life. This Summer has been absolutely miserable cold and it has even drizzled several times. It’s been cold and windy, and frustrating is the only way to describe it. Of course this is the first Summer I’ve been in San Francisco in three years.

I like where I live now. It’s not ideal ideal, but it’s more than satisfactory so I should clock my appreciation for that. This end of Noe Street is quiet and sees a reasonable amount of sun. The ceiling of this apartment is really thin so we can hear just about everything going on upstairs and that could be annoying, but I think we might be just as noisy to them.

I’m a little uneasy describing the physical space as comfortable, because I’m uneasy with physical space overall. There are times when the physicality of my surroundings seems so very arbitrary, and I know that most people don’t question such things. Physical surroundings are indisputable facts, they are not up for discussion or debate. It is such a basic thing that I’m struggling with, it’s kinda pointless, but not to me.

And in stranger times I feel that intangible things like dreams and hopes have less abstract forms and they feel more like fabrics, but just in my mind. Well, that’s self-contradictory, but I’m questioning what anything means to be “in my mind” because theoretically, everything is in my mind, or everything is my mind. So I’m sorta re-defining tangibility for myself, too.

So a final bit of confusion is in questioning what it means to be inside me and what it means to be outside. I’m supposed to be looking “inside” me, but where is that? Not a question to be taken lightly, but often done so.

1557 Noe St., San Francisco

All told I’m pretty happy with where I am in my life. This is the start of stage II. All that has passed is stage I, and that all ended in April with ten years of journal entries written in this format. This format appears to be the most ideal, so nothing new here.

I’m not about to attempt to explain the significance of stage II. Suffice it to say that stage I was development and learning, a ten year period of personal growth; stage II I’m hoping will be more clarification and application, a continuation of personal growth, but more on a plateau than on an incline.

So first, a bit of recap.

Fiction is floundering and I need to find another project or another band. We haven’t rehearsed for two months because Josh supposedly hurt himself, but I don't think that's the whole story. He's been stonewalling any progress. Josh, as far as I’m concerned, is out of the band. No steps have been taken to get a new drummer.

I’ve wasted the entire summer pretending to look for a job. I’ve just been incredibly lazy and I’ve really gotten nothing done. I did apply for a few but didn’t get any of them. All summer I’ve been telling myself that I have to go to a temp agency, but it just never happened. I’m a big loser in the work department.

The situation with my housemates is satisfactory for most part. Rosalie and I get along really well when we spend time together. She is moody, though, and if she’s in a bad mood, the best policy is to just stay away. Otherwise, she’s totally sweet and funny. Mina has gotten increasingly annoying. All I’ll say is that her whining is overpowering, and I believe her now when she says she’s a total klutz.

As for me...

All told I’m pretty happy with where I am in life, unemployment notwithstanding. I look at myself and compare myself with people around me and I’m comfortable with who I am and where I am in life. Unemployment notwithstanding.

I think I’m doing a fairly good job trying to keep true to my nature. I think I’m doing alright as a Buddhist, not that “doing” has any meaning or significance, much less “doing alright”.

It’s so hard to convey because language immediately limits what I feel I’m experiencing. I’d like to say I’m making progress, but progress is not a goal. I’d like to say that it makes me feel good that I’m sitting everyday and my sitting is productive, but feeling good isn’t important, nor is being “productive”.

I like to think that I just do it because I do it, but even “I like to think...” is off the mark. It should be, “I just do it”. If it’s real, then that’s the reason one should do it; no thinking. I don’t think it’s the only reason I do it. There still is too much ego in my sitting.

I feel like I’m in the tail end of my life and I think that puts me one up on people around me; people who are at this age now and are dissatisfied with where they are in life because they feel that they should be at the prime of their life or at least on their way up, but are still struggling to get things started. Me, I’m at the end of my life, I have nothing to accomplish or prove. All I need is to be comfortable with who I am and where I am in life. I hope to be able to explain it better.