I am twenty-three years old, unemployed, and for the first time in eighteen years I am not going to school this fall.

Weird. Time to apply for grad school.

Here I am once again at the coffee shop, jobless, aimless, and procrastinating on the important things in life in a new town that's not so new anymore. I'm overhearing cute boys in Amanda Palmer shirts discuss the deeper meaning of Spawn and his role as an anti-hero. I think They Might Be Giants is playing (everything is conditional).

Last night I accompanied a boy from the internet grocery shopping because he didn't want to do it alone. After ringing up $143 worth of items in the self checkout (augh), he discovered he'd forgotten his card at home. I was left to stand with the cart and press “yes” for “do you want to continue?” messages for the next 20 minutes while he ran home. I want to make some joke about banal sex, except we didn't do it and aren't going to do it. I'll take what I can get when it comes to Chicago friends who didn't go to elementary school, high school, or college with someone I already know. A person can only befriend so many people from Stevens Point, Wisconsin before they break.

My boyfriend is a prick, but I've known that since meeting him five years ago and starting to date him two years ago. Everyone's a prick, myself included, so it works out.

Yesterday Pandora played The Decemberists covering Bjork's Human Behavior, which has to be one of the strangest things I've ever heard.

Well then, let's go get me a job.

So long before the Jim Carrey film I learned to have negative associations with the number 23. The pagan number! Whatever the hell that means. Coincidental observation is a strange bird. If you start building associations with 23, you'll start seeing it everywhere. It is sort of similar to how it seems when you learn a new word it suddenly appears in a book or a movie the next day.

Anyway, three months into my Chicago life I still have no career. I finally had an interview, which went very well, but I did not get the position. So it goes. My savings (ex-Euro vacation fund) are holding out, but not for too much longer. If I don't find anything in the next month, I'll have to decide whether to take a crap job to tide me over while I search or else settle for a less then ideal entry level position somewhere, anyway.

In comparison to what's happening to friends and family around me, my life is coming up roses. Divorce, cancer, job loss, quarter life crisis, they have it all!

I'm not feeling capable of weaving this all together. Maybe I should apply for jobs instead of whinging.

Why do I always poison the well before trying to drink from it?

Why am I trying to drink from the well when I brought my own water?