How to Kill a Day

When you don't have a job, girlfriend, or much money to spend, your calendar is usually pretty open. It's hard to understand if you're a busy or productive person, but finding enough things to occupy your time can be tougher than you'd think. Making one day different from the next is even harder.

I guess if you have a hobby it's different. If you don't, your day may look a bit like mine.

Wake up: 10:30am-1:00pm. This can vary due to the previous night's activities, which most likely includes droning out to HBO on Demand and hours of pointless web surfing. It's hard to go to bed early when you have nothing to do in the morning. At this time, it's important to make a plan for your day. Never happens as planned. Also a great time to look for a job.

Lunch: 1:00-3:00. Unless your European, there's no excuse to take more than an hour for lunch. This is a great way to burn time though. Lunch is a welcome break for working folk. It gives them nourishment, clears the mind for the rest of the work day, and gives you energy. For the jobless, it's a time for self reflection and a way to push the hour hand a little further. Oh, and it's also a great way to spend money you don't have. When your income is 0, spending $12 on lunch is pretty dumb, but easy to do. PS: You still haven't looked for a job yet.

Afternoon: 3:00-?. By this time, you should have been looking for a job for a few hours. Chances are, you haven't. Maybe a few checks of craigslist in between e-mails. Maybe you actually went out and hit the pavement. To be fair, it's hard to actively look for jobs after a few days worth of rejection. It pays to be persistant, but it's hard to stay consistant.

Evening: This can vary depending on how you spend your afternoon. Your job search is over (hopefully) and you now need something to do. When you're unemployed, evenings can drive you crazy. You feel like you should be doing something fun. At the same time you feel a little guilty for possibly wasting your day. This is also when you start planning your next day, and promising yourself that it'll be more productive than the last. Have a beer, watch a ballgame. Working people are doing the same thing.

Night: Depends on when your evening ends. It's an uncomfortable mix on ancy boredom and placid ponderment. Almost impossible to go to bed at a sensible hour. Save dinner, you've really got nothing to do but watch tv, read, send impatient text messages, and swear you're going to wake up bright and early tomorrow and get a job. If you have On Demand, you've probably seen every program on it. You've also probably spent too much time on myspace, facebook, and you've read every link on google news so you can tell people you stay current. Busy people have this sort of thing as a treat, a distraction. You've been online for so long that you feel like you've actually exhausted the resources of the internet.

Hey, if you can't figure out any other ways to kill your unemployed time, write a blog. I just killed my morning. Time for a European lunch.

Everyone's a Critic

Taking criticism is sometimes hard to swallow. Unfortunately it's one of the necessary evils of being, or trying to be a writer of any sort. It's something that every person, in every field must go through in order to get better at what they do. The good thing is, in most cases it does more help than harm. Let's be honest though, no one likes to hear it no matter how helpful it may be.

Last night I got my prose blasted by the last person I would have expected to. Now let me set this up for you so you get my drift as clear as possible. I got a call from a girl who I hadn't seen in a few months. I got the invitation I wanted, took a quick shower, and I was at the front door in 30. White wine, a small couch, candles, and a movie. Boo-yah, sounds like a good Thursday night, no?

After a bit of catching up, I did what I always do and shamelessly plugged my blog. In some dopey, subconscious way, I think my web page ideas coupled with some irrelevant Italian phrases can miraculously swoon any girl into a fit of culture-filled passion and desire. It almost never does. At my recommendation she read my favorite piece. She gave me a luke-warm reaction that was kind of complimentary, smiled, and went back to her wine.

Fast forward an hour or so. The wine's gone, we're getting cuddly, and the movie is pretty much meaningless at this point. "Are you happy to see me?" I asked. "Yeah," she said, "but next time you come to me with some writing, you better bring more to the table". She had just admitted she didn't like my piece. She then told me my writing was good but unfocused. More than that, she went on to tell me that if she didn't know me she wouldn't have made it past the second paragraph. For a writer, this is the equivalent of being punched in the balls right before you pee. It hurts, and then pain kind of lingers around for a few minutes.

Your first instinct is always to defend yourself, but with no ulterior motive in her description, I had to accept it as a valid point. In fact, it was criticism in its purest form. Albeit alcohol induced, she was blatantly honest. I was staying over no matter what she said about my writing. Honestly, reading back on a few of those blogs, she wasn't entirely wrong. It was refreshing. I realized that I'd rather be bashed honestly than complimented dishonestly or out of obligation.

Let this be a challenge to you, the reader, or readers (hopefully) to step up to the plate and start criticising what you read more openly, even brutally if you have to. Honesty is more sincere than a flimsy compliment. Especially when you're pointing out something that the person your being honest with may or may not know. Don't go around telling fat people they're fat, or short people they're short. They know that already. Try being insightful, detailed, and offer a solution to whatever quip you have with the writer. It's seriously refreshing.

I'd be a fool not to see the whole thing as a win/win situation. I still spent the night, kept my ego intact, got some free breakfast, and some pointers how to make a better blog. Like I said before, sounds like a good Thursday night, no?

All in a Day's Work

Call it fate, call it luck, call it what you will, but less than one day after my jobless diatribe I now have a job. It's not a bartending job, that would make too much sense. I'm now going to be Boston's latest addition to the blue-coller world of construction. Honestly, I know nothing about construction or even what I'm constructing. I know it's in Charlestown, pays $100 a day, starts early, and it's REAL work.

Working with your hands outside definitely has its benefits. It's got to be kind of rewarding to make something tangible and useful, rather than destroying livers and and involuntarily listening to degenerates rant and rave. Then again, I'm not your typical dirt-under-your-nails type of guy. I guess I'm going to have to break down some of my stereotypes of who these guys are and how they work.

Typically, my experience with construction workers comes from working the day shifts at my old bar, The Linwood. Most of them would come in at 11:30am, drink 5 or 6 beers in a half-hour, sexually harass any form of a female who would walk by, and curse like a sailor. So far, not too far off from how me and my friends act on a Friday night.

The gig starts Monday morning, and my first tasks will be to mix cement, lift buckets, and sweep. In my new boss' words, "You're going to be my bitch. But it's not so bad, cause I like you". I'll take that as a compliment. Well, I'll just take take that as it is. Six years of college and a bachelor's degree later, and I'm now a bitch laborer in Charlestown. Honestly, I couldn't be happier.

Welcome Home

Hola boys and girls. I just wanted to welcome you all to my little corner of the internet. As a recently (well, 3 months ago) unemployed bartender and super-sexy-genius, I have found myself bored, jobless, and staying in my parents basement. Now while this may sound like a barrel of monkeys to some, I think it sucks.

So, rather than mope about the house and bitch to my friend Sokly (who's also unemployed and living at home) about how much better life would be with a job, girlfriend, car, and apartment, I've decided to get proactive. No, not the acne cream amigos. I'm talking about using my skills, brains, charm (wink wink), and sometimes ill-gotten connections to make some dough and lift myself back to glory.

Here's the problem. How to do it. My mission is to somehow, someway, use this website to make money. Can't be done, you say. I think different. I just haven't figured it out yet. Porno would be the quickest option, but alas, I don't have the resources or damaged childhood to pull that one off. Besides, I'm not actually a super-sexy-genious.

Instead I'm going to write about what I'm thinking about, seeing, and doing on a daily basis. I've also got some good stuff from the old Linwood days to recolect. So mouseketeers, put on your laughing caps and come wallow with me in a sea of insensitivity, sexual inuendo, way too many commas and parenthesis, and middle-school level editing. It's time to turn my Bachelor's Degree into some cheddar (that's cash for anyone over 40).

Aloha