Last week, when Bill and I went to see the Luther Vandross documentary we were chatting before it started. I don’t remember the exact conversation but it involved zombies eating brains. I said something quite witty and quick and I was astounded at how I didn’t even think about what I was saying but it was funny and apt. It happens from time to time, my mind reacting to a conversation in a humorous way.

I mentioned to Bill that we should do a podcast. With my employment status and the election, it feels like a dream I can’t wake up from and I am thinking of ways that I can take my meager talents and perhaps make a living from them.

A podcast seemed like a thing that might work, though we don’t have the expertise to get the mechanicals together to do such a thing. I do have an old friend who knows of these things and eventually sent a text about producing and directing a podcast.

I mentioned it being like the Mike Douglas Show from the 1970s but that was just a fleeting reference since the concept seems so much larger than that. It’s been about a week and I had hoped this friend’s eyes rolled back into place rather than the eye action that accompanies when hearing of ‘yet another harebrained scheme by John’.

The idea is still there and I have all these entries from this here blog that could be referenced and spoken of for broadcast. Bill came up with a very good idea of 5 actors that we love and or hate and why we feel that way about them. I suppose we can just do it ourselves without said friend.

I see so many others doing these things so why not jump on the bandwagon? Perhaps it would be better if we just do it ourselves. It might take longer but we would have no one to rely on but ourselves and if nothing comes of it, at least we tried.

I was thinking also of how another old friend, Steve Fallon told me years ago that I was born 10 years too late. I didn’t think much about it, it did seem to make some kind of sense. I mentioned it to the previously mentioned old friend who expressed some sort of disdain, saying it was a rotten thing to say. I didn’t get that at all, but perhaps old friend one was indignant on my behalf.

I was texting Daisy today, she was offering her belief that her god will do right bby me, all I had to do was believe and be positive. I told her it was difficult to maintain positivity when faced with so much negativity.

I had to tell her that no one wants to hire a 62 year old man, which is the main reason why I am thinking of podcasting or writing or selling prints of photos that have taken for years that friends and family remarked at how good they were. I have to think out of the box it seems.

It’s taken me long enough to think so, but I have to find the box first.

I returned the Michael Palin Diaries: The Python Years 1969-1979. I ordered the second installment Halfway to Hollywood 1980-1988 which should be available in a day or two. I am also reading Stephen Sondheim- Finishing the Hat. It’s my second go-round with this book and I find it an easier read than it was a few years ago.

I am also reading A Ned Rorem Reader which is a collection of interviews and stories from Ned Rorem. He was someone that I heard ‘of’, rather than heard. There is a wonderful, funny interview that Rorem has with Stephen Sondheim and it’s worth checking out on YouTube.

I just started reading A Ned Rorem Reader this afternoon and within minutes I was struck by something Ned Rorem said about writing a diary when he was living in Paris.

In Chez Marie-Laure de Noailles, M. de Noailles handed him ‘a pretty little carnet with several hundred empty pages, saying “Here, write. Even if you feel bad before and after while you’re writing your cares are transferred”.’

That actually makes sense. The cares ARE transferred and I more or less feel the same as I did before I started writing. This is a diary. It is a blog. It is whatever you want to call it. I am relatively ambivalent about what to call it, usually calling it this here blog.

Today was a gloomy Sunday. The sun was out and there was a chill in the air. On the top floor of the building where Bill and I live, it’s generally cooler than it is when we hit the street. Thermometer readings are of no use. I explained to Bill how I was feeling depressed when we took a walk, like a failure, ashamed of my employment situation.

Mainly wary of how people I care about might perceive this latest setback Some family members know, but others are intentionally left in the dark. And knowing they do not read this here blog that secret seems to be safe.

There will be no Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, plans have changed, and no invitations are proffered. And that’s OK. I am content to do nothing since I have been doing nothing for a few weeks now and it’s really just another day.

I just have to make it to Friday, which is far away when you are not doing anything. I do look for work, I do send out resumes. No one’s biting. Perhaps it’s the end of the year and no one wants to know. I am tainted by ageism.

I was born in 1962, I am 62 and I am 6’2”.

I feel like I am 40 sometimes. That does not do anyone any good, these delusions. They certainly do not do me any good. I send out resumes and occasionally think I am so perfect for this spot or that gig, and then again there are dozens if not, hundreds that send out their resumes, some of them thinking the same thing.

And in the back of my mind, I think the last job will call back, telling me what an awful mistake they made in letting me go. Begging me to return with more money offered.

Now that is a delusion, yes a fleeting one but it does make an appearance and leaves a mark.