Going to the Office

Being unemployed (or "looking for work" or "a freelance writer," depending on how you like to see it), I find myself constructing an alternate reality in which I almost have a job that I go to every day. Clichéd as it may be, I get up every "morning," hop on my bike, and head down to a café, where I "work" on my Apple laptop, sipping iced coffee. Some of this work, mind you, is actual work-- I do some research for a guy-- but a good chunk of it is checking my e-mail for job offers that never arrive, sending e-mails requesting jobs that aren't available, and now, apparently, blogging.

It's a relatively short rotation of cafés I visit in Somerville, and so I see a number of the same people on a day-to-day basis. There's goatee-man-with-the-huge-stomach, there's awfully- audacious-with-leaving-her-laptop-unattended-lady, there's Redbones-deliveryman-who-makes- out-with-his-girlfriend-in-Diesel-Cafe-guy, and of course, there's crazy-guy-with-the-beard- who-smells-but-is-friendly-enough-all-things-considered. In a way, I think of them as my co-workers. None of us, it appears, actually have anything to do during the days, so we all get together, sip our iced coffee, and validate one another.

It's frustrating, leeching on society (and particularly on the free wireless at True Grounds) and feeling generally unproductive. Still, the life has its perks. This morning, my alarm went off at 7:30 because I was feeling ambitious last night... I got out of bed at 9:15. And I'm planning on shoving off around 2:30 to go watch a soccer game. Things could be worse, really.