Finding Happiness!

 

Happiness isn't a common word nowadays.

I have some ideas about how to find happiness in this Covid world. You will have to find your own. For one, I avoid talk about human beings whose evictions and foreclosures have been delayed due to the intervention of the government. I don't want to discuss the day in the near future when these people are going to have to cough up (a bad joke), a lot of money. Everybody knows somebody who has lost a job. What will the net result be? Riots, and general mayhem. If you hated the riots in major cities thus far, hold onto the arms of your rocking chair. Sorry, I don't mean to ruin your day. 

Maybe I'm wrong; maybe it won't get worse in America and the world. Vaccines are on their way. Some people think that a new president will solve everything. Sorry, it won't. But back to my point. Somehow, with all the bad news in America, we need to stay positive. I'm not suggesting we all put on a happy cartoon smiling face on our masks that says, "Have a nice day!" There's no doubt sad news can be depressing, and then we are no good to anyone, including ourselves.

Here's what I did recently: I sold my Utah land and left Everett, Washington with some truly idealist notions about living on my Utah land. I had a big new tent, a big solar kit, and a sleeping bag that could withstand freezing temperatures. But Utah is the driest state in the union. It is illegal to dig a well without water rights. And in the four years since I acquired my land, those costs have tripled. I blame Santa Barbara for why I love the beach and fish tacos. It it was a song it would be titled: Blame it on the guacamole. I've had a wake up call the past few months. I can't afford to buy a house anywhere on the West Coast of the USA., anywhere near a beach. If you don't already know, there is a feeding frenzy going on in the real estate market. The greediness of real estate agents and sellers have no bounds. As a sort of social experiment, I communicated with many real estate agents and three lenders. They virtually said the same thing: It all comes down to money coming in every month. The hypocrisy is that freelance income, unless it is guaranteed in writing for three years, doesn't count when you go looking to buy a house. However, if I land another position with an agency, suddenly the lenders will love me again. Even though this is illogical, because people are regularly permanently laid off in this pandemic situation.

What we are looking at is a world further divided between the haves and the have-nots. All the bullets in the world won't fix that. All the plywood nailed to protect windows and doors won't fix it. We may be in for a Zombie Apocalypse. It's like that novel (and film), The Road. I met several people who sleep in their cars in California. A lady from Iran, who came here six years ago, sleeps in her car near California beaches. Why aren't these people's stories on the front pages of every newspaper? The bottom line is: We all need to be a little less judgmental of others, and try a little more love. I try, but I can't afford to help everyone I've met. I couldn't help the Iranian lady. It's a heartbreaking thing to realize you can't help everybody you meet. I brought her breakfast once, on Pismo Beach, and gave her a pair of earrings I'd bought in Utah. It put a smile on her face. That smile was worth a million dollars. It was a good day for both of us.

There is still beauty of the world. Sunshine through fall colored maple leaves, a bird hovering on the wind, the ocean gently lapping a beach, elk that let you take photos from a short distance away. Despite the fires in California, Oregon, and Washington, the West Coast has some truly awe-inspiring natural beauty. Having spent two months in southwest Utah in order to sell my property, I was physically and emotionally in need of the moistness of the Pacific NW. For over fifty days, the temperatures in Saint George, Utah were over 100F. Too hot for this amphibian.

A buck in a herd of twenty-two elk I found by a harbor near Fort Stevens, in Oregon.

In my recent travels I found a few cool motels. Many motels are not being maintained, so when you find any joy at staying at a motel, you should fill out the surveys and let people know some happiness can still be found on The Road.

I stayed in motels as I drove north along the coasts of California, Oregon, and Washington. Weekends are the priciest time to stay in a motel. One motel lady said I should just pick one and go there to get a room and not bother with Booking, Priceline, Expedia, or any other service online. You often get the same rate. Three times Booking.com messed up my booking and I had to cancel reservations and get a refund. This involves having the motel proprietor reply to the booking company to let them know they would waive the penalty for cancelling. The last motel I stayed in was in Astoria, Oregon. The Atomic Motel. It's a kitschy motel; a bit funky too. 

The Atomic Motel's decor was 1950s Rat Pack. The lobby was also way kitschy.

The bottom line is: Have fun; remember that life is supposed be happy. Help people if you can. We must get through this, there is no other option. Do nice things for yourself. Buy that special creme for your face. Eat organic, and often. Drink lots of water. Avoid cane sugar. If the world seems too gloomy to go on, try making your own happiness wherever you are. Buy a lamp like this, and it may get you through the day with a smile on your face.

A Mystery Wrapped in an Enigma.

I'm selling my eighty acres in southwest Utah, which is located about fifty miles north of St. George, and forty-one miles from Cedar City. I spent a few nights on my land before the most recent heat wave drove me to a hotel room. I'd been living in a suburb of Seattle; triple digit temperatures are anathema there. A few days ago it was 109F in St. George. It's like climbing in a hot dryer

and shutting the door. Combined with low humidity, summertime weather in southwest Utah sucked the life out of me. I don't think I could ever get used to weather in Utah. I need humidity; I'm not from a land inhabited by reptiles.

Yesterday morning, as I dressed in the tent, a flock of about twenty blackbirds landed on the tent. I paid attention; I've heard of bird omens; perhaps this was one of those things. Or maybe strange things happen in desert lands, like a dry wind that comes out of nowhere. Most of the flock flew off after a few minutes, but one lingered and alighted on a tent tether by a screened window and watched me. It was as if she were telling me everything's going to be okay now that I've made a deal to sell the land. The second time I visited the property I spoke aloud to the sky and complained about the land. As I walked to my Nissan Pathfinder I found a Native American arrowhead. The artifact appeared from nowhere, as if the ghosts of Native Americans had heard my disappointment. 

Water rights are not cheap in Utah. It has one of the lowest rainfalls in the United States. Water is like gold. Only eleven inches of rainfall falls on this area of Iron County. More rain falls in Seattle in one month than falls all year long in Utah. But there is water beneath the ground in Utah. On my land there is an aquifer, as evidenced by the many farms south of me who regularly irrigate their crops. In Utah, if a landowner digs their own well without owning water rights, they are fined. It's even illegal to construct a water catchment system. The selling of bad water rights is an ongoing problem in Utah. It's up to the buyer to make sure the rights are still legitimate. I only knew this because I'd investigated two listings and found one had lapsed due to lack of use. This sounded illegal to me, but the water rights office told me that no one is being arrested for selling bad water rights.

In Utah, a land owner can buy water rights from anyone within a certain distance from their property within the same county. The cost of rights were in the five-thousand dollar range. After acquiring water rights I would have to hire someone to dig a well, at the cost of around ten-thousand dollars. It is illegal for a well digger in Utah to dig on anyone's land who doesn't own water rights. In other words, I would have to invest fifteen thousand dollars to have what most property owners in America take for granted.

Dale Melbourne, a theatrical actress, in the 1950s.

I'm relieved to be selling my land, but the mysteries remain. The one person who could tell me why the land was purchased, died nearly twenty years ago. I was given the land by my employer; John Herklotz, of American Happenings in Orange County, CA. It was his wife, Dale Melbourne, (nee - Mary Huleyard); a theatrical actress from Melbourne, Australia, who'd bought the property, and owned it since the late 1960s. Why, is the big question. It is within two miles of vast circular fields of alfalfa, in a remote area of southwest Utah. Herklotz had no reliable information about the land, which Dale bought before they met in Los Angeles, in the1980s. By that time, Dale was thrice widowed, and she and her sister had long retired from being actresses. When I worked for Herklotz he once had me organize files in the office closet. I came upon a stash of CDs that included footage of Dale when she was married to a cattle rancher in Illinois. I only know this because Herklotz mentioned it. The strangest part of the footage showed Dale doing various things. In one clip she is outside combing her long blonde hair. She is very Nordic looking, in her late 40s or early 50s. Then the footage segues to showing Dale in a leopard print bathing suit inside a grassy pasture surrounded by a white fence. She leads a 3,000 lb. Black Angus bull by a rope into the frame, ties the rope to the fence, and begins washing the enormous bull with a garden hose and what looks like a bottle of dish soap. The bull is nonplused by the attention. Maybe Dale raised that monster, and it isn't aware of its enormous size. After she lathers the bull on this strange summer day she kisses it on the nose, and proceeds to wash her own hair with the hose and dish soap. She has a towel hanging on the fence, and she squeezes the water from her hair as she bends over and wraps it in the towel and stands. Then she unties the bull's rope and leads it, stopping once to kiss it again on the nose. It is the tamest, most gigantic bull in the world. This is the woman that bought my land. Why? No one knows. She was only married to Herklotz for seven years. At most they'd known each other for a decade. I showed that footage to Herklotz and he said he'd never seen it before. This was when he told me Dale had once been married to a cattle rancher in Illinois. Herklotz had a number of fanciful ideas about the land. He said he thought it had been leased out to a farmer who raised alfalfa, and presumed it had geothermal potential. He never explained where he got his information. He sent me to investigate the land in early 2016, because he'd never seen it. He'd been paying property taxes for years. It was a bleak place, without obvious value. He seemed surprised by that news. I made a video titled My Utah Land, while a Utah surveyor named Doug Grimshaw and his young assistant did the first survey since 1910. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLe9vHEhHUo

I let John know what the land was like and he shrugged. He said he'd assumed some things about the land; if I didn't want it he said I could give it back to him. He was a mercurial man, well versed in the arts of business double dealings. Maybe he simply gave me the worthless land as a way to play with my head; to elicit gratitude and get me to do more work for him, promoting his various interests in film. I was already doing a lot of work for his associate in Maryland, who ran America's Mock Elections.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9wjf54XlAc

Fires were everywhere this past week in southern Utah.

Perhaps Herklotz gave his wife's actual land to someone else, and had one of his many lawyers do the switch. Perhaps he honestly didn't know someone in Utah had swindled him. Maybe no one swindled anyone. Maybe there is something buried on the land, like Dale's last husband, or a trunk full of cash. It's like David Lynch's Mulholland Drive storyline fused with that of The Big Lebowski. John was ninety-four in 2016, and not the business tycoon he once was, when he wheeled and dealed in telecommunications when it was in its infancy, and broadcast towers were popping up everywhere. He owned broadcast towers on Tesuque Peak near Santa Fe, New Mexico, which sold for about five million dollars in 2017. He'd retired from the Chicago Tribune, as a CPA. Herklotz died in December of 2018. Though the world remembers him as a great philanthropist who had a habit of suing people over entertainment issues, I knew him as a partially disabled old man who liked Svedka vodka, which he often asked me to buy for him behind the back of Lucy, his crazy, domineering, bipolar Mexican housekeeper. It was the love of vodka that resulted in my finding him on the floor of his bedroom one morning in 2016. He'd passed out and spent the night there, and was too obese to get back into bed. He gave me the land because I called the EMTs, worked hard on every project he gave me, took him to lavish charity events in L.A. and Orange County, such as the Gary Sinise party, and visited him while he was in the hospital in Irvine, and the care center in Lake Forest. One day when I'd brought his mail and reported about business matters, he said he'd decided to give me the Utah land. I said thank you.

Herklotz died broke. He gave away all his money to universities, and many noteworthy causes. So kudos to him. Most people don't make in their lifetimes what he gave away. He was a complicated man. Many rich people are; many philanthropists are. He promised me fifty-thousand for helping him sell Tesuque Peak., and twice that to a longtime mutual friend, Dan Wilkins, with whom he'd had some battles. We never got our promised monies. Herklotz funded Wilkins' film, Have You Seen Clem. It's the quirky story of a man who loses a chain of restaurants and seeks to wreak revenge on a banker, only to discover in his travels across America in an RV that there are many hurting people in this country, and so he decides to forgive the banker. The story is mostly true by the way, because Wilkins lost a lot of money and a chain of Duff's restaurants in Tennessee due to foreclosure.

Now that I'm selling the land, I regret never having the truth told to me about it. I'm not ungrateful, I just wish I knew more about it. If it is the land his wife bought, I suppose there are only a few explanations. One - she was exhibiting the first signs of Alzheimer's, the disease that eventually killed her in 1999. Or two - she buried something on the land she didn't want anyone to find, like her third husband, or a chest of money. But these are just the writer in me trying to develop the plot. Some secrets can never be told, and mysteries will always remain about my Utah land.

"You can tell a lot about a person by their shoes." - Forrest Gump

Some shoes seem like they were meant for my feet. Such is the case with these Nike Hyperfeel training shoes, that made me feel as if I could run 100 miles an hour.

There they were, in new condition, smiling at me from a shelf in a used clothing store in Portland, Oregon. It had been a hard year for me but things were picking up. These shoes brought a smile to my face, as if the universe were saying, "Hey, lighten up, dude, life is supposed to be fun!"

I bought them on the spot. They probably came directly from someone who worked at Nike, whose headquarters in Beaverton  were within ten miles of the store. I loved these shoes and wore them cautiously at first, afraid to tarnish their day glow lime color. But eventually I wore them everyday for six years. The soles showed signs of wear, but the shoes held up until that fateful day I overdid it on a rocky ledge, and gouged a small hole in one of them while fleeing a hornet. Ah well. It took another two years before they said to me, "We've had a good run, mate. It's time to find another pair."

The price and availability of this retro style surprised me. Even if they could be found, they were quickly purchased, and sold for almost $180. Then they disappeared altogether.

I had a backup pair of casual shoes I'd owned even longer, but wore less frequently. I forget where I bought these SWIMS. They took a long time to break in. Then one day they felt nice. They whispered, "You know, orange is just as lovable as lime green. How about taking us with you on your next trip to Santa Barbara?" 

My trip to Santa Barbara has become my tradition near the end of every September. I went three times while working in Orange County. My unpretentious SWIMS make me look like a local, as if I've just taken my sailboat around the postcard perfect Santa Barbara coastline. The SWIMS lack the form fit of the Nike Hyperfeel shoes, but they make up for it with their laid back attitude. They look good while eating fish tacos, or shopping on State Street in downtown Santa Barbara.

I suppose a lot of people have friendships with their shoes. Clothes may not make the man, as the saying goes, but shoes do say a lot about a person. Forest Gump reminded us of that. They tell a story of the places we've been. Every time I look at a certain pair of Italian dress shoes I think of the outfit I wore at my son's wedding. Maybe that's why some people have so many pairs of shoes. They have a lot of memories they want to keep.

This graphic came with the Capital Fund notification.

The Capital Fund email arrived early on the 4th of July, and my first reaction was one of doubt. 

I am not alone in my skepticism. Nobody I know wants to be disappointed. We live in an age where it's wise to mull over any news, big or small. We tell ourselves to take a little breath, and we try to be more logical and analytical, to protect ourselves. But yesterday I didn't want to be Nordic or Vulcan. It's human nature to doubt. But I'm trying to stay positive in 2020, and honestly, it's in my nature to be an optimist. Optimism can be a disappointing point of view, but maybe it's the right point of view. Let me summarize my feelings: YAHOO!

Allow me to explain. I recently left a suburb of Seattle, the land where weather forecasters often use the phrase: WE CAN EXPECT RAIN SHOWERS TOMORROW. At the time of my departure, riots had ravaged downtown businesses. An eight block section of downtown was being ruined by a lot of crazy young people. Arson and thief had become acceptable forms of behavior, on the pretext of Black Lives Matter. Fear was ruling the lives of everyone I knew. I don't buy that justification. Could the death of George Floyd, a black man with a prison record for armed robbery, who was killed by a brutal policeman for allegedly foisting counterfeit bills in Minneapolis, MN, ever be an excuse for ruining an innocent business owner's livelihood, or setting someone's car on fire? Could it ever justify hurling rocks and bottles at policemen who have nothing whatsoever to do with the death of Mr. Floyd? Isn't living in one of the hotspots of the Covid-19 pandemic a reason to be kind to one another, and considerate? No, apparently not. It wore me out. As a writer, artist, and musician, I wanted peace to be my way of life, and being loving my modus operandi.

In summary, I grew weary of the social distancing, the proscribed wearing of masks, and the general malaise that settled like a dark cloud over the Seattle area. Has the world gone mad? Perhaps; or perhaps it had always been on its way there. People carry a lot of anger inside. I can only imagine what will ensue when Trump is reelected. I expect that will not be a pretty picture in America. People in the Pacific NW have wanted a zombie apocalypse for at least a decade; this is their dream come true.

But I digress. I am here to mention this little victory; my having been amongst the Hot 100 in the Capital Fund Screenplay Competition. As I recall, I believe I entered two screenplays, but I could be wrong. I was distracted by the other news, the news that I tried hard to ignore. For brevity, let's say I entered one: 21 Days in Paris. I have high hopes for this screenplay. The email mentioned that it's certainly in the realm of possibilities that a financier, producer, director, or agent may reach out to me, even though I didn't win. There are some things we just can't control. I'm believing in a happy ever after ending to that development. One day I will get that call, or email, with someone eager to buy or option my scripts, or novels. We need little affirmations along the way, bread crumbs to lead us out of the dark woods.

So celebrate with me. Maybe you have had similar happy moments where that little voice in your head, like an aeolian wind, whispered 'Do a happy Snoopy dance.' It was a nice gift on the 4th of July. Maybe those little moments, when the rockets are launched and a myriad starburst of colors festoon the night sky, are symbolic of all our hopes for surprising happiness in life. We all need a little joy, and I had mine yesterday. It's been scribed in the history books now. I have proof I am still on the right track. If we pay attention, we'll see the universe winking at us, giving us hugs to carry on despite the pandemic.

Oh the joys of social distancing!

The organic grocery I shop at installed big sneeze guard cages around the checkout counters. They're well constructed, with metal frames around plexiglass panels. Still, it's surreal. The store has a notice on their deli section floor instructing customers to remain outside the taped zone. Today was the first day I wore a mask. I didn't enjoy it much, but I will try to get used to it. My social life, which was already in decline, is nonexistent.

There came a point, not that long ago, when Covid-19 became more than just a subject of mockery, and was termed a pandemic. In the beginning, not quite two months ago, very few people took it seriously. Then they did. Literally, it was a matter of days when the virus dominated the news. Toilet paper disappeared from grocery stores. People fought over it. Why toilet paper? Why did shoppers leave entire aisles of water, juice, and citrus fruits untouched?

There were many rumors flying around the Census office. A woman said she thought it was a deliberate act of terrorism by the Chinese. Then the lockdowns began. Italy was the first country. Others followed. International flights were cancelled. San Francisco was locked down, and then all of California. Schools, libraries, restaurants, a host of various businesses were closed. Boeing temporarily closed, with no date set for a reopening. On the news last night, it was reported 30,000 Boeing employees are now laid off.

I have worked at a Census office since the first of the year. As the weeks progressed I noticed more of my coworkers coughing and sneezing. At least four Census field supervisors, and several enumerators resigned. Every Friday we had a group meeting, and the head honcho at first said the Coronavirus was nothing to worry about. In two weeks he said the opposite. We began wiping down everything: phones, keyboards, headsets, doorknobs. The handwriting on the wall; I knew it was a matter of a week or two and we'd all be sent home. My conversations with people I was hiring as enumerators followed a certain thread. People were progressively getting less interested in working for the 2020 Census, in any capacity. Staff were resigning. The places I'd booked for training enumerators began bowing out. Finally, three weeks ago, we were all sent home. Our weekly pay continues.

The post office by me has a long "shower curtain" between postal workers and customers. One of the clerks, who knows me by name, gave me a mask today. I just tried it out. I don't like it much, but maybe it will keep me safe. There is a lot of pollen in the air, so perhaps that's a reason to wear it. The Coronavirus is most likely going to be with us until June, maybe longer. Some suggest the onset of summer may stop the virus, or at least slow it down, because the virus doesn't do well in warm, humid conditions. Here's an article about the Coronavirus/Covid-19 with virologist David Ho:
https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/tip-iceberg-virologist-david-ho-bs-74-speaks-about-covid-19

There is good news amidst all the bad news. Once a person recovers from Covid-19 they are unlikely to be reinfected. Studies have shown that a vaccine for Covid-19 might happen sooner than later. The aforementioned article mentions a fifteen minute test was developed for the HIV-AIDS test. According to the latest news, a test for Covid-19 might provide results in five minutes. An actual vaccine probably won't be approved until next year.

During the plague (and there were at least four that hit Europe), two thirds of the people were immune and survived. Ninety-five percent of the people exposed to the Coronavirus recover. But that still amounts to an estimated 2.2 million people in the United States dying from the virus.

I've bought a bottle of organic merlot wine to celebrate the end of the Covid-19 this year. I may have to drink it alone. A friend in Australia, which is about to experience the troubles of the northern hemisphere, as they enter the winter months (and we the summer months), suggested we toast in a Skype conversation. It's still too early to celebrate. That celebration might not even happen this year. It's a gloomy, but realistic thought.


I'd planned on going to do some work on my land in southwest Utah, and felt bad I'd put it off last summer. I have to get out of this city. Living on my land is about the safest place I can be right now. It's off the grid, and six miles from a small store.

I've put off buying solar panels and materials for a small shack on my land. I don't like being cautious, but everyone says now is the time for caution. Many people in the Pacific Northwest have wanted a zombie apocalypse. Well, now we may have one, and the aliens will probably not show up to save us.

We're on our own in this part of the Milky Way. I'm going to try to get plenty of sleep, eat lots of chicken soup, and keep enough supplies handy to make it through this. In the grocery today I saw a woman whose cart was packed to the gills. She had ten cartons of eggs. Maybe she's going to bake a lot of cakes. Maybe she's an optimist, and expects this thing to blow over pretty soon. I hope she's right. If not, please keep six feet away from me. I need my space.

The holidays are over. I already miss 2019 as much as I missed the previous years. Where do the years go to, friend? One day you look in the mirror and you're old. I watch a lot of movies to help me assuage the passage of time. I think it might help me become a better storyteller. If nothing else, it provides me with lively party banter. And there is one more party left this year. New Year's Eve will arrive whether you want it to or not. It sort of makes me envious of people in insane asylums who are stuck in time. 

But let's talk about stories. They seem to happen to me all the time. I thought if I stayed indoors I'd be safe, but stories afflict me like a glass of absinthe in a Paris cafe. Why do I mention Paris? Well, I'm doing what most people rarely do: I'm adapting a screenplay into a novel. Why isn't this a good idea? Because screenplays typically are 100 to120 pages in length. Try selling a novel that's under 200 pages to a publisher. It's not easy. I'm on page 176, with three pages left in my screenplay. Should I hang out and ask random strangers about their misadventures in Paris? No, I know what I must do. I must extrapolate. This is a fun word that means go off on tangents that run on forever. Like two hundred pages more than they should. This technique is a useful one when a writer is bored, and is being paid by the word.

Recently I was invited to a party. It was slated to be a lesbian Buddhist party. It felt a lot like the tea party in Alice in Wonderland, with too many old Alices. I took two stories with me. I should have taken my guitar and sung a few songs; maybe Shallow by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper. It was sort of interesting. But bringing the stories was a mistake. There are few things straight writers can write that won't offend militant lesbians. So I offended the host, who touts herself as an old crone dike. Another straight woman there, (or maybe she's bisexual), read my story, How Does That Make You Feel? and said it was a stream of consciousness. She's a hack writer who left her husband for some guy from South Africa, and espouses to be part of a coven. I haven't talked to her about her new religion. Witches aren't my thing. This woman's poems have to do with feminist concepts that never seem to go away in Seattle, decorated with lots of profanity. Man Hating is a popular theme. The host objected to my How Does That Make You Feel? story because I'd had the audacity to go inside the head of a woman who was questioning whether she was a lesbian. My protagonist's head wasn't the only head I'd pried open in the story. I pried everyone's head open. The story is from the third person omniscient, in the Vonnegut tradition. I thought writers are free to write from any point of view, human or inhuman. I thought this was America where we're all free to fly our freak flags.

A RECENT SHORT STORY PUBLISHED BY RED FEZ.

The publisher of a recent story, Somnambulist in Love, was supposed to give me X hours to do edits. 

Nope. They published it with few modifications. Let me give you a summary: A sleepwalker in San Francisco is torn between two women. Until recently, he didn't know he was a sleepwalker (a somnambulist). It's laced with comedy, as most of my writings are.

https://www.redfez.net/fiction/sleeplessness-somnambulist-in-love-972

One of the rich ladies he's involved with has paid for the best neurologist-psychiatrist in S.F. The man must make a choice about being with Lydia or with Nancy. Or make no choice at all, and continue living a lie. It is comedic, but I'm sure it will offend someone. There is no escaping offending someone. But if they keep turning the pages and read until the end, how bad can the story be? I used to be a sleepwalker. I wouldn't know about it except my mother told me of my shenanigans. Undoubtedly she didn't witness all of them. This went on from age five to age eight. It might still be going on. Or maybe I just became an insomniac as I got older. Who knows? My son suggested I dust the floor by my bed with flour and check for footprints in the morning. That won't work because I am up and down all night. I'm doomed. All writers with active minds are doomed.

There are many reasons why people lose their minds. One of them is due to applying for jobs.

Let's say I've dipped my toes in some strange swimming pools. If there were wrecking yards for jobs, I've found them. But wait, let me back up here. Most people are not creative. They are seemingly content to do ordinary, rather boring work their entire lives. The jobs make them feel secure. Most of these jobs are very low wage positions. The scariest ones pay huge salaries. The same effort is put into applying for most jobs unless your boss is a relative. The employers of generic jobs want people who will stick around. Forever. Thus, they take one look at my resume and say to themselves, 'This guy is way too creative. He might have ideas about our business. We know what we're doing; we don't need trouble-makers.' Why do I even bring this up? Because somebody needs me; somewhere in the world. Right now, even as this blog is read, by you or people like you, some overworked HR Director is sweating profusely, overwhelmed by the process of saying yes to some and no to others. They are weary of playing God. They have mortgages, and other financial obligations.

Even God is weary of playing God. If you want to pity someone, pity God, who has the worst job in the known and unknown universe. Nobody wants God's job. But I digress. We are not god-like beings, and Lord knows, HR Directors are not perfect human beings. No one is having a perfect, wonderful life on Planet Earth. You are not alone. Follow the light. No, not that light, the other light. There. Let me tell you about my recent misadventures in Job-Land. Not long after arriving in this town, slightly north of Seattle, I began a creative flurry of writing. My plan was to sell one of my screenplays, write new ones, do big paintings, talk a publisher into publishing my novels and short stories, play my guitars, eat good food, shower regularly, maybe hit a few tennis balls, wear clean clothes and good shoes, fall in love, raise a family, and retire in Key West or Santa Barbara. The raising a family part is a fib. I've already raised two children. They graduated colleges, got married, and moved far away. My ex-wife has moved on to other married men. No, I only fantasize about starting a new family. Fantasizing is what writers do. We invent other realities.

The most recent ludicrous job I've applied to is with the Census Bureau. I thought it would be a plausible way to get through the winter. But the government and I will never have a close friendship. I have tried. We dated a bit, and the chemistry wasn't there, so I told the government not to friend me on Facebook or other social media. They texted me day and night. I had to block them. No. Can you spell convoluted? That's the process of applying for government jobs. First, they skewer you, then they slather on the barbecue sauce. Then, just as you are led to believe the job is yours they forget you've applied. Because I write comedies, this should have made me smile. Probably if I ate green cookies everything could be a comedy. But who gets anything done while they're high? Answer: Most of the people in Seattle. Listen: The Census Bureau is run by numbskulls. The Three Stooges were rocket scientists compared to this wing of the Federal Government. The Census Bureau HR people directed me thusly, via a weird phone calls and equally weird emails:

1. What is your name? No, your full name. Huh, that's a funny middle name. Is it your real name?
2. What is your social security number? No, I'm sorry, that's doesn't agree with our records.
3. Yes, that about does it. We'll send an email confirmation, so you can go online and fill in our form. You say you've already filled in the form and submitted it? Sorry, we can't find it. Try again.
4. Upon receipt of the completed form, we will run a background check. We're sorry, you don't exist.
5. We received your application. Great! Now you'll need to go to a MacDonald's at the corner of Third and Furniture, to be fingerprinted. Yes, by the Big Mac machine. We're not sure of the address.
6. Please don't ask me any questions. Just fill out the dang form. I'm a volunteer, okay? Jeez.
7. We're sorry, if you don't return the form within the next week we'll shred your application.
8. Welcome aboard! We're so pleased you're a patriotic American. This census only happens once every ten years! We will carve your name on the trunk of a tree somewhere. Congratulations!
9. What is your name? No, your full name? What's your favorite color? What sign are you?
10. We checked your fingerprints and don't believe you're part of the human race. Goodbye.

I swear, it's a true story. Madness is the norm in the world. Meanwhile, I have begun looking for another part-time or possibly full time job. Possibly teaching English in Siberia or North Korea is for me. If there is no comedy involved, I don't want to waste my time or your time. I will bring my own straitjacket. And my own fingerprints, or someone's fingerprints. And how many people are living in this household? Uh-huh. And, where do all fifty of you sleep? Ah, I see. Is there someone else here I can talk to who speaks English? Are the other people living in this household invisible? I see. You're all fifty of those people? Okay then. Good day to you sir, and madam.