Chapter One - 1d

Life was good for about a week. Maybe not even that. In the background, no matter how much I tried to block it out, my personal money meter was running. So I started looking online for work. Then I really started worrying. Nothing was out there. Well, nothing may be an exaggeration. To be accurate there was nothing out there for me. Nothing but temp or contract work that was a two hour commute away. By week two I was applying for those. Nothing. Just auto responses dropping into my spam folder like little pieces of electronic dog shit.

In the next two months I got two calls on my resume. Before I got an offer usually for every eight resumes I sent out. This time I had lost count on how many I had clicked "Send" on. The one that seemed promising required a clean piss test. That wasn't going to happen. I smoked it a bit now and then. Like every morning. If you got a buzz on early in the morning it seemed to hang in there all day. That way I could conserve my weed usage. Plus it helped with my anxiety levels. Self medication does have its place you know.

By month three I was running out of big money. Big money, to me at least, was enough money to pay my mortgage and condo fees. Big money was paying the note on my car and the quarterly car insurance bill. Little money I still had. Little money was for buying coffee at Starbucks and sitting around listening in on other peoples conversations in hopes that I would hear them tell someone how much worse their life was then mine. I heard some good stories of pain and loss. I also listened in what I thought at first were real estate agents selling houses. Instead it turned out they were former real estate agents selling various franchise scams.

I was also, at least at first, hoping I could get laid. I realized that being unemployed wasn't going to render me more attractive. I just hoped I could get a boredom hookup. Never happened. The barrista, who was cute but married, did give me free drinks when they made mistakes. That was the extent of my big score. Eventually I gave up on going there. It was getting expensive and way to depressing.