� Jonathan Mahler, in "Commute to Nowhere," NYT Magazine yesterday

Anyway, yeah, i stuck my toe in job market waters today and holy mother of god. There aren't even any actual jobs listed - it's all like fake shit, employment agencies, train at home, outside sales, English speakers preferred.

� Vanessa, in e-mail this afternoon

I have to say, sitting in Steve�s armchair and reading that article yesterday did me a world of good. Yes, I�m about to take a 40-some percent pay cut from my software gig two years ago to do a job I was overqualified for by the time I graduated college, but at least I am not a former $300K software exec now working at the Gap for ten an hour. And more than that (sometimes I think that this is an effect to which I am more susceptible than other people), seeing some of the angsty crapoola that�s been on my mind for the last several months written down and codified � institutionalized, even, by no less an authority than they grey lady�s capital-m Magazine � makes me feel validated. Diagnosed, the same way looking at my pee-test results gave me permission to feel as lousy as I wanted to, but likewise also soothed, as if the facts, in each case, were a cool hand on my forehead. I had an almost physical sensation of sympathy. I accepted that my situation was just my situation, that things were tough all over. I got permission to stop kicking myself in the ribs. The economy�s really bad, people, and unless you have some kind of technical or industry-specific knowledge instead of being a "digital marketer" or "writer and editor," chances are that if you've lost a job you�ve gone from irenic open waters and smooth sailing ahead to cleaning the bottom of the fishtank. Period. And I think that some people, by dint of maybe their ages or the fact that they socialize with people from the office and work for a stable company, still believe that this is an exaggeration because they don�t see any evidence of it in their own lives, they don�t personally know anyone who�s been laid off or who�s had to take the old pay cut and swallow hard. This is one aspect of my acquaintanceship with Todd that was difficult, because while I was doing police transcription and applying in vain for jobs I was overqualified for by the time I graduated college, he and his friends were making money hand over fist, every quarter brighter and flusher than the one before, and if he thought that I was magnifying my plight to try to get attention, maybe that was only a reasonable response based on his empirical evidence. To a lesser extent, the disconnect is there with Steve too. He keeps saying things like You are a fool to work in the Butthole Clinic and here is what you should be doing instead, and then he has some idea that takes my skills and experience into consideration and would, again, be perfectly reasonable in a normal economy, like contracting as a tech writer for Microsoft. And then I have to say, in this instance, Well, yes, it is a fine idea, but the number of contract-writer positions has decreased and the pool of applicants has increased so that now, all the open listings contain as a prerequisite the successful completion of at least one previous contract there. (True fact � I�ve been told by about six different contract agencies sorry and great resume and samples but don�t waste your time trying.) And then he says Oh and gets quiet, and then next time he�ll have another idea of what I should be doing instead, and then we have to go through the same thing all over again. It is our special foxtrot. It makes me feel angry and miserable and hostile and vulnerable all at the same time, and I try to ignore the semantic implications of what he�s saying, partly because after all they are only semantic and partly because to the extent to which they are not, Steve�s a creature of his milieu and empirical evidence the same way Todd was, and I am the suspect outlier. Although I think even Steve might be starting to come around. He heard on the radio a few days ago that in the Northwest region, which he�s guessing is Washington and Oregon and Idaho, the neck-and-neck top two categories for new construction are (a) vacation homes and (b) prisons. I said: And that�s all you need to know about what life is like in Seattle right now.

Though I do want to point out that the NYT article is no kind of a personal touchstone. Like, the Tom quoted above is former shitloads-earning financial executive Tom Pyle, and in the previous paragraph he talks about how he could consider subsisting on a schoolteacher�s salary if he sold his house and one of his three family cars and rejiggered his stock portfolio to produce more than $25,000 a year in interest income. Even the guy who works at the Gap has a wife who brings home the bacon by means of a tenure-track professorship in media studies. The reader, however soothed and forgiven by the article as a whole, can also be forgiven a shuddering reminder that in other ways � thanks, Po! � she has nothing in common with these people, nothing at all.

Only thing that sucks about April so far is that over the past few weeks I�ve been realizing, cumulatively, how much social stuff I�m getting left out of. And don�t get on my jock about how I�m imagining things because the reason I know this is that my friends are getting invited and I�m not, and one of life�s more basic awkward situations is when a friend suddenly leans across a table or looks over from her perch on the sofa and says, "Oh, so are you going to so-and-so?" and you have to say Um no I hadn�t heard about that and the friend asks, confused but mortification dawning, "You didn�t get the eVite/e-mail/phone call?" and then you have to come up with a reason to change the subject to something like politics or school vouchers right away. And really, I feel at least three ways about this. One is a matter of philosophy: I believe that if someone wants to have a party, that person has every right to invite only the people he or she wants on the premises. As someone who�s often been guilt-tripped into inviting people over whom I would rather not have had there � note: this does not refer to anyone who by any stretch of the imagination might be reading this page � I know that standing your hostly ground is sometimes not easy, and especially if you�re the one buying the booze and preparing food, you have every right to manage the investments of time and money that you have made in your party, and the same goes for happy hours, girls' nights, whatever. Two, however, involves my inner middle schooler, who turns to talk of school vouchers with tears welling in her eyes and self-hate also welling on account of them, who has a hunger to be included � included as opposed to being rejected � that knows no logic or no philosophy and is like a near-biological manifestation of yearning. Every time I get the social shaft, I am unable to stop myself from going down a list of every possible reason why it might have happened, and I can itemize within each category of, e.g., So Unattractive Others Are Uncomfortable Being Around Me, So Pathetic ditto, and Not Hip Enough By Half, so that even if, having considered each sub-sub-item, I decided that it was not in play, the taint of its possibility lingers, having been articulated, like a bad taste in my mouth, like a threat, like a predestination. I was social scum until halfway through my junior year of high school and frankly the only reason things changed then is that I clean-slate transferred to a new institution with fewer students who tended towards lower standards, and one of what feels to me like my greatest accomplishments is that meeting me now you�d never know that; when new acquaintances ask me, say, if I was ever a cheerleader, mostly I get insulted but I�ll confess, there is a secret part of me that thrills to the implied Because it seems to me that you could have been. In the sense that this represents the inquisitor�s idea of a high-functioning norm, you see. And every time I get the social shaft, I can�t help the rising flash of panic that maybe I never got away from that unwanted idiot self after all � maybe it is coming back to reclaim me, under penalty and with interest due. Ugh, I feel like such a dork even writing this. But then Three shrugs resignedly and reminds me of all that I like and want to do that falls away in the presence of an active social life, like writing letters and cooking and running and seeing my great-aunt more often and reading � hell, there�s so much I want and feel obliged to keep up with if even on the most rudimentary level of self-informedness, and yes, thank you, it was in fact for that I went to college � and staying in touch with my less proximate friends for whose lives I "don't have a sense of the day-to-day rhythms" (I�m quoting Catharine, who was feeling frustrated last week by the same thing) and trying to stay connected to my sister and oh yeah figuring out what exactly is going to be my life plan or whatever and how over the next few months to start putting it into action. I�m not rationalizing when I say that doing any one of these things feels hugely more fulfilling, more [other word than "spiritually"] resonant, and more a constituent element of the good life than sitting around a table with some cast of the usual suspects and a pitcher of microbrew. I want some of the latter action, yes. Of course I do. But if I can�t have it, even if I couldn�t have it at all � I�m thinking along similar hypothetical lines to the scenario from my last entry of having to pick one artist�s music to listen to for always � then what I�ve got instead, my myself and I and my own devices and my own unashamed brain, is no booby prize.

Besides, it's cheaper this way.

Oh, and speaking of the last entry, I realized after I posted it that another good question might be why I *chose*, and kept choosing, these dudes who didn�t want to see me or who assumed that they could do a better job of it than I could. Guilty as charged, and I don�t know the answer to that one either. What else I don�t know the answer to is how to manage the intermittent invitations that do come from the same people who are leaving me out of the majority of their plans-making. In that second high school, there was a girl named Allison who often had big parties at her house, and she and her best girlfriend would make up the A, B, and C lists: if you were on the A list, you were a made man in Allison�s personal mafia, and you were enthusiastically invited to come early and stay late, and you could be fairly secure that Allison would not be making fun of you behind your back. Those on the B list would not receive a personal invitation from Allison, but A-listers were deputized to issue grudging assents if B-listers prostrated themselves sufficiently and begged, though it was understood that Allison herself would not be talking to them. The A�s and the B�s, however, had in common that they were both provided with a list of those whom Allison wouldn�t piss on if they were on fire, who if they had the gall to crash would be turned away at the door, and everyone was encouraged to make fun of these sad sack C-listers and tell them how amazing the party was going to be and too bad they were such losers they could only dream of being there. If you don�t know what list I was on, you haven�t been paying attention. But the current situation is one where ignorance truly would have been bliss, and now that I know the date-and-place facts of what scarlet letter I would wear in this more adult (ha! as if) social arena, now that I know what I�m missing, it�s hard not to feel wounded such that the occasional begrudged inclusion would feel like salt.

Yet I do not want to burn bridges. Yet I want to put myself first, Do Less, get things done, not drink so much and not have so many inane around-the-table-with-a-pitcher conversations about drinking so much. Yet there�s a certain amount of that kind of conversation that�s just social dues-paying and the way you convince people that you are of their tribe so they will like and trust you. Yet is there not already some evidence that they don�t like me? So, argh, I don�t know about that shit either. My short-term plan is to look after my kidneys, not beat up on myself, recognize the fearful high-school mentality for what it is (again easier said than done), and spend some time with (a) my cat and (b) Steve, who is on my A list always, and I should remember that too. (B) and I are going to Port Townsend this coming weekend � no reason, just to get out of Seattle. We�re taking our laptops and some bread and cheese and those Lou Reed tapes. Also, Seven Year Wendy is in town for a while, and the two of them are getting dinner on Wednesday and maybe she is coming over to his place to visit her ex-cat, and am I even one tiny bit bothered by this? No. Interestingly (tellingly?), I am not. I wish to reiterate that for the very most part, April is making me happy indeed.

I have go do some editorial stuff that I�ve been ignoring for the past few weeks. Tonight I�m watching "Harlan County USA," half of Friday�s two-for-one documentary special (maybe more to come about the other half), while Steve works late and then goes to check out a sofa he might buy. Did you know that Barbara Kopple was an editor on "Hearts and Minds"? Tomorrow: haircut. Then Wednesday after Number Two, if I am feeling like some company, I just might invite myself out to Septieme for a cocktail.

Apparently Bushcroft is going after Syria now. Well well, who ever would have thought it?