130 Dollars In About Three Hours

I frequently have to remind myself that people are lazy. In the world of offices, emails, phone-calls, meetings, lunches, deadlines, and days off, much of an honest day's work is spent fucking around. This is fine.

I, however, am plagued by the urge to be constantly productive. I once had a job working for the Pasadena library. I was a page, which meant that I was responsible for putting books back on shelves, and maintaining the organization of said books on also-said shelves. There were only two pages at my library, and from what I could tell by monitoring the stack of returned books and the state of the shelves the other page did not spend very much time replacing and organizing books. I, on the other hand, spent as much time as I could bear efficiently maintaining the organizational integrity of my little library. I was eventually fired. Not fired, exactly, but simply not retained. I was a probationary employee and after 6 happy months my boss let me go, with what I could tell was a certain amount of regret. I worked hard at that job and lost it.

Later I had another library job, this time at the California State University, Northridge Music and Media Library. I was a special assistant to the music librarian, which means that I executed whatever projects she gave me. Sometimes this meant doing my old job of organizing stuff, sometimes it meant going through donations to the library and assessing their value to the collection. Lots of different things, sometimes menial and sometimes challenging. I had learned, however, to fuck around. I surfed the internet. I browsed the collection. I stared off into space. If a certain project had any real urgency I would focus on the task and please my boss with my ability to come through, but usually I tried to treat my work like a fly. I would shoo it away if it bothered me and try to squash it if I had nothing better to do. At that job I got an award for being one of the best new employees at the annual banquet thing.

I have to remember to fuck around. Two days ago I had a very successful morning filled with emails and revelations and phone calls. Then I put in a couple of strong hours on the piano, and some more time working on songs at the guitar. The next day (yesterday) I slept until noon and spent the rest of the day trying to convince myself that I wasn't a waste of flesh. Things turned out ok. Threatened by rain, I rode my bike downtown anyway, and was treated to chilly but beautiful weather and time spent with the wonderful Midnight Ridazz. Today is looking to be one of the productive ones.

Shame Log Lives

I was up at 8 this morning, and rode my bike to the Glendale Social Services office to inquire about EBT. I was in the office at 9 or 9:30, and at noon I walked out the door with a little plastic card charged up with 130 dollars that I can redeem for a wide variety of snacks up until the end of the month.

I recommend everyone apply for social benefits. If you are steadily employed, I recommend you quit your job, turn your liquid assets into reliable and untraceable gold bars, and spend a Friday morning at with Social Services. There, simply by asking for help, it is assumed that you need help. You will not make eye contact with anyone you don't have to. Nobody wants to look at you, and they don't want you looking at them. If you are at the Glendale office, a nice Armenian lady will try to convince you to accept general relief ($220 a month!) in addition to food stamps, and you will decline because while you have may have reached the point of asking for a handout, you will not ask for anything more than you deem "necessary". Then you will go to the Whole Food for Life market and the man behind the deli counter will make you a huge sandwich and throw in two amazing side salads (some kind of potato thing, and something with beets) because you originally asked for a pizza and the pizza dough is frozen. He will call you "Bro", and it will feel genuine, possibly because he is much older than you are or maybe he is just a really nice guy. Whatever the reason, you will feel like his Bro, and you will go pay for the sandwich and the money will come from taxes. Probably they will come from the late penalties that a mechanic in Oklahoma had to pay to the IRS because he was dealing with cancer and well that just sort of dominates ones priorities, even when it comes to the United States Government, but they probably wont have come from Rex W. Tillerson because that rich fuck probably spends more money on his tax lawyer than he does to the Federal Government.

I still have half the sandwich and the salads. I will update this post with a picture later.