The neighborhood here on the hill is going downhill. But it’s not the neighborhood’s fault. The whole country is going downhill. Maybe most of the world too at the same time.

The poor people, and I am one of them, are getting poorer quicker as time passes. It’s stressful. They cope badly, with booze and yelling, too many people jammed into too few rooms and too many cars coming and going on the street at all hours of the night.

I cope badly very differently; caffeine, nicotine, obsessions and belletristic fits and starts, and I daydream about what I will do to their dogs and maybe to them for being such shitty pet owners and noise polluters.

I don’t know if Covid was ever a real thing, but when it abruptly ended, things were different. The help wanted signs go up and they stay up. Today there was one at the coolest coffee shop. So I got my java and I asked the cool chick how many hours a week there would be at that job.

First she said they were putting off hiring until February at least. I didn’t ask her why the sign was still up. Then she said, um, twelve maybe sixteen … hours … maybe …

So alright. I’m supposed to keep my availability open whenever, be ready to pick up a shift any time they finally get busy, and in exchange, I pull down maybe six, seven hundred bucks a month, with benefits out of the question. Huh. Nah.

I might make twice as much at some fast-food shithole, for twice as many hours, but I can’t even fully imagine what that would do to my head and self-worth.

Maybe I’m better off falling off the economic cliff, or of course trying to land something remote over the Starlink. Yeah.

Pretty sure I won’t be working on the railroad though.

DEBATE: Did the Squad BETRAY Rail Workers?

Spoiler alert: The question is rhetorical and the answer is obviously yes, unless you’re a tool of corporate hegemony like Ryan Grim.

Catching-up companion piece posted under 23 Nov if you care to. Almost home.