As I explained to Jenny earlier, my increasing worry about finances now consumes my every waking moment.  If I fail to find gainful employment by the first of the year… well, let’s just say I’m pretty well fucked.

Surprisingly, I made a horrible mistake in assuming Texas would think of sabbaticals as a normal consideration for people like me who have been working diligently for 20 years (okay, not quite 19, but I rounded up).  Apparently, I was wrong.  There is a sad message to be heard when too many voice concern and reluctance based on that one fact: being out of work since March.  It’s disheartening.

But I keep going.  I’m broadening my horizons greatly and attempting to delve into work I never before considered.  Writing will not provide immediate financial assistance, nor does it open its doors to newbies like me without trepidation and doubt, two things normally responsible for sinking whatever hope might have existed.  You know how it goes: Until you’re published somewhere, you can’t get published.  It’s like credit: You have to have it to get it.  Those managing such decisions always fail to realize how ludicrous that premise really is.

If not for the cold and ice today (oh, and it was still snowing a few minutes ago when I looked outside!), I likely would have found the strength and ambition to hang myself from the bottom of my office chair.  Sure, it would have taken some time to die—by starvation, lack of water, or boredom—but it’s the effort that counts.  And that justly encapsulates my mood.

December will be a dark month, I’m afraid, and January looks to be shaping up as my homage to homelessness, or at least my destitute destination if I can prolong getting kicked out of house and home until February.  But perhaps I’m being too melodramatic.