And now for something completely depressing

Looking through my computer for a comic strip I wrote but never published, I found this little journal entry. It was written about, two years ago maybe? Maybe a year and a half? Long ago enough to be funny, but close enough to be sad.

It's funny how things change and stay the same, as the songs go.
(oh, and there's some swearing in it. I was trying to keep swearing out, but screw it.)
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Losing Streak :I Hate my Life and I Want to Die

I hate my life. I really do.
First of all, I've just moved to California six months ago and I have yet to find a steady job. Now, I'm not looking for anything terribly important, I just want something to give me a reason to get up in the morning. It would also be nice to be able to afford some of the finer things in life like, say, gasoline for my car.

I can't tell you how many times over the past year that I've ran out of gas on the street. That's got to be the most god awful pathetic things on the planet, some sorry schmuck trying to squeeze out a couple extra miles out of the remaining vapors in their car simply because they can't afford to buy any more. That, or I feel too much like a fuckup when I stop to buy just one dollar worth of gas. There was one time when I bought thirty cents worth of gas.

That's fucking pathetic.

So, I've spent the majority of my time sleeping till two in the afternoon, and then spending the rest of the day feeling shitty for having slept in so long. Then at night, I get so nervous and anxious about being poor that I can't get to sleep.

When I'm not doing that, I'm job hunting, which has to be the most demeaning thing on the planet next to prostitution and selling your blood. (Something that I've really been contemplating. Selling my blood, that is. Everytime I think about it I'm like, "that's fucking it. I'm doing it." and then I have a birthday, or something and get enough money to survive.)

I actually found a job that's perfect: Substitute Teaching. I'm not going to go into what a fucking rigamarole it is to get the job. Okay, I will. It's one of those jobs where you give them your application and they say, "Give us two to four weeks to process it." Then they put it in a stack of applications. You come back five weeks later and say, "So, it's been quite a while. How's my application doing?" "When did you turn it in?" "Gosh, like four or five weeks ago." "Well, it takes four weeks to process." "So mine should be done then." "WHat?" "Just go check." Then she goes and checks and says, "You didn't fill out the back page at the end of your application." So I take it home, sign my name, and five more weeks pass and they finally give me the job. Not until I pay them $200 bucks to prove that I'm not a child molester, background checks.

So I started in December and it was awesome. All you do when you sub is sit and read a book and tell kids to stay in their seats and not piss you off. If they do, you say, "Shut the fuck up you little monkey." Then they say, "Oooh, I'm gonna tell." Then you say, "Go ahead. Who do you think they're gonna believe? A little punkass bitch or me, a respectable adult teacher?" This shuts them up immediately and you can go back to reading.

So anyway, the job is amazing, but the thing is, you don't get called everyday. Once you start working in schools, the secretaries remember you and put your name on a list, but until then, you're just fucked. Then you have to add in all the holidays. I started working in December, and got about five days of work before Winter Break. That lasted three weeks, and then comes January when all the teachers don't want to call in sick because they just took off three weeks. So, you guessed it, I'm back in the same shitpile I was before.

I can't tell you how much life fucking sucks when you don't have a job. If you have a job, I'm sure you'd love to have a couple weeks off, but six months? Give me a fucking break.

I can't even spend the time working on my own projects either, because I feel so guilty that I'm not out looking for a job. I have a script that I'm writing with a friend and that thing will never be done because I'm so fucking depressed about being unemployed. That's the thing, man, the movie we're writing is a comedy. You don't feel very comedic when you're looking through the yellow pages trying to find "food stamps" or "Soup kitchens".

I guess that's the most infuriating thing, I came out to California with my young wife and my dog trying to pursue a job in writing, but instead all I do is mope around in my underwear wishing I had money to go buy a fucking hamburger and some cigarettes.

I really think things will get better. I do. It all hinges on getting a fucking job, though. Andrea, my wife, keeps pressuring me to get a "Hollywood job" you know, the kind where you work 75 hours a week for some asshole in a suit that uses your face as an ashtray for ten bucks an hour. She seems to think that it'll help me get connections, but from what my friends say, all that job's good for is that it gives you a good reason to drink, and better drug connections to buy cocaine from.

It's times like this that I really wish that I smoked pot. Life as a bum probably doesn't seem so bad if you're baked every day.

I have all these artistic projects I want to work on, but I'm too fucking flakey to get anything done. I'm doing this cartoon right now, not to say boohoo what a sad sack of shit I am, but to do something. To get my voice out there. I'm sure nobody's going to see this thing, either. And you know what? I don't care. Because until I get a job and get on my feet, I've got to keep fighting, and writing foulmothed tirades about how much my life sucks is part of that fighting. Making this cartoon is about staying afloat. I feel like my nose is just barely above the water and every word I eek out is like a little breath of air.