� Bob Pulcini, co-writer/co-director of "American Splendor," interviewed by Anthony Kaufman in IndieWire

I�m in the doldrums, though after staying in and cooking and watching "Narc" last night all my myself instead of playing poker with my social circle�s best and brightest � though poker ended up not happening, but I didn�t know that until this morning � I�m feeling better than I was yesterday. Last night Steve and I were talking about what percentage of people hate their jobs. Casually hate, I was thinking, if you can imagine such a thing, that over time becomes more like banked resignation. I said 60%, Steve thinks higher, with another 15 to 20% somewhere between ambivalence and whatever comes right before active hate, which if you think about it is all soul-crushing so what�s the difference and also now that I do think about it that figure seems too small; I don�t think that any more than ten percent of the population would answer Hell yes to "I like my job."

So my life is not so wretched after all! Chances are that the job I eventually get x number of months down the line is going to be soul-crushing, low-paying, below my abilities (we were also talking about what percentage of people feel valued as individuals in their job performance), and requiring me to kill hours a day online or engaged in personal pursuits, but when that�s the case I�ll be in good company, I will be a member of a pretty fucking big club. It was this dude�s entry in my guestbook that got me thusly thinking � so, Pete, thanks for pushing my creeping sense of hopeless over the line from hysteria into acceptance, and I mean that in the nicest way. Here in Seattle there are a few companies that hire smartass youngsters, trick out the workplaces with amenities like foosball tables and free food and on-site masseurs, pay like they�re minting money and give vacation time like they�re France, and seem to look the other way about the fact that even if you leave at 6:30 or 7, when you come in at ten and eat lunch with your posse and take full advantage of your coffee breaks that�s barely a forty-hour week. It is hard when you know people who work at places like that � who are somehow never influential enough to get you hired or even to present your resume to an HR drone in person, goddammit � because since they tend to be friends with all the other smartass youngsters they work with and to hang out together in the after-non-forty-hours, you tend to lose sight of how these lucky fucks are an infinitesimal minority of the American populace. Instead you curse your own miserable luck, you curse whatever not-good-enoughness about yourself that you can�t quite put your finger on but is obviously holding you back from your own entr�e into foosball nirvana, and then in trying to put your finger on it � you�re diligent, and you want to know � you end up picking open all these psychic wounds you didn�t know you had and with also the nail rending your sense of self-worth, but these people with the bonuses and the stock options and the anytime-they-want-it leaves of absence that, even worse, many of them take for granted because their parents are well off and that�s the kind of life they had all along and they never imagined that any other lot could fall to them, these people are also your friends, and you have to divorce the resentment and the frustration and the envy and the scab-picking and the fear from your interactions with them. Even when they are worth hundreds of times what you will ever be and still don�t like to tip the bartender.

It�s hard, it sucks, but that�s life and you suck it up and go on and then one day you die. (Can you tell I absolutely can�t wait to see "American Splendor"?) In the meantime you try to find little ways to make yourself � to believe yourself � remarkable, if only for a moment at a time. I believe it because I have to.

I think I�m also going to be more judicious about the social invitations I accept for a while. I mean, I�m not going to go out in a pack on Friday nights just because someone I know has a hankering for some beer. I�m going to try to spend some time consciously shoring myself up. Staying in last night was a smalltime revelation in that respect � all day long I�d been considering the prospect of poker, the slow-boiling awesome terror of it, over and over again even though I�d decided not to go. I did it out of a combination of boredom and masochism, like that time I was locked in someone else�s apartment for two days and passed the hours doing that thing where you sit on a sofa and position yourself so that you collapse your diaphragm enough to hallucinate and pass out. I could not have done it, I would have felt like so much nothing next to everyone else who was going to be there, these things came to me with the clarity of a religious vision. So I crapped out like a spoiled baby but I have to save myself first, and then sometime after the movie started it hit me with the certainty of a fist: I like myself better when I am alone. I was alone, and I was content. I was aware of my shortcomings and failures and faults but they were mine, see, they were circumscribed and manageable. There was nothing to throw them into relief and play up their impressive absolute magnitude. And I think I would like to have that experience, and that kind of contentedness with my currently meager station, on a fairly regular basis. I think I have been missing it. Plus I should lose some weight, so why not.

I didn�t understand why David Chase wrote the part of Tony Soprano with Ray Liotta in mind until I saw him in "Narc." Damn he was good. Take Two for TV, don�t ask, is first thing Tuesday morning. After that I�m going to Portland and staying the night then coming back Wednesday afternoon sometime. This weekend will be the end of the major part of the move, furniture and all, and next week at Beacon Hill while Rebecca�s at work � so I can play music and move from room to room and stuff � I have to box books and a few other things, organize paperwork, clean up, and get out. With pleasure! that is only slightly adulerated by trepidation, and by fear of the unknown.

Sticker shock. That is what Steve said I had last night, when I confessed that I was worried anew I�d never find a job ever and wondered whether I�d acted hastily, shafting Gastro. I hope he�s right. Yesterday afternoon, Alicia the heroically imperturbable receptionist stopped by my office and started telling me that she was proud of me for doing it, that she wished she could do the same herself (she has kids and is in the process of buying a house), that she was so happy for me and she just knew there was a better job and a better life out there waiting for me, I had always been way too good for this outfit. "You know that, right?" she asked in a suddenly pleading tone of voice. "Please tell me you know that, because it�s so, so, true, we all love you and we�re going to miss you, but it�s so true." She was almost crying. I felt so bad for her that my eyes teared up in sympathy, and I don�t think I�ve ever been gladder for the excuse of a ringing phone. I hope Alicia manages to get out too one day before she�s gotten bitter, and in the meantime I hope I don�t disappoint her, I hope I do not betray her faith in me.