4-7-8. That is the breathing exercise I do. I do it a few times before bed. Sitting at the edge of my bed while Bill sleeps next to me, I look at the stopwatch on my phone and inhale for 4 seconds, hold for 7 seconds, and exhale for 8 seconds. I think it works.

It might be wishful thinking. I read about it in the New York Times a few months ago and friends had recommended it. And though I canceled my New York Times subscription after their anti-Biden editorial (they say nothing at all about the orange idiot and its constant lying), I still keep up with the breathing exercise.

And I also do it heading to work and returning to the office as my break winds down in the afternoon. I guess it works. It calms the stressful tic I get walking back to the office. On the right side of my face, it acts up. Maybe it looks like I am having a stroke, I’ve never checked because I silently freak out as I walk and focus on counting my breathing.

They mentioned the breathing exercise once on an episode of Ted Lasso and I felt validated as Bill was watching it at the same time. He sometimes asks about it, but as far as I know, he doesn’t do it.

The job was awful again today and no amount of counted breaths made any difference. Schlomo was in as well as the Legume. My tasks were mostly done by midday and I scrambled to find other tasks to fill out the rest of the afternoon.

Some time was spent looking for people who were not in. That is always a possibility. The thing about this job and I’m not sure if I mentioned it before is, that this job was a job I actually enjoyed. Helping 9/11 victims. I’d wake up in the morning, not minding going to work.

There were a couple of times when the clock radio went off with a commercial from this job advising people to get themselves checked out. It got a laugh then, 3 years ago. Now I think I would look for a hammer to destroy the clock radio.

I am filled with dread about going in. I have the 2 strikes against me. I went through the stages of dying, applying them to my work status. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.

I am at the acceptance stage and I feel that if they called me in to let me go I would just say ‘Thank god this cruel charade is over’. As far as I know, they don’t know about this here blog and I ain’t gonna tell ‘em. They don’t seem to be the literate type anyhow.

I have no choice but to stay as long as they will have me. The place is now infested with millennials and everything is run to their whims. Being a twentieth-century guy leaves me on the outside looking in, which is how things have been for most of my life.

Sigh. That’s about all I can do or say. It’s been that kind of a day. Sleep did not come easily or comfortably last night so the day started out like that. I got it together and was soon on the train after the usual hug & kiss from Bill as well as the recitation of the checklist before I left the apartment.

I knew what I was getting myself into at work. Schlomo and his supervisor were bound to be in. As stressed out as I may have been last week, the temperature was definitely going to be higher this week. And it was.

You see, where I work, it’s an office a block and a half from where the Twin Towers stood, where we help people who are suffering the effects of being at or near ground zero during and after 9/11. This is why I am respectful to these clients that come into the office. Most of the time they have appointments but not always.

Still, each person gets treated like an adult, with respect. It doesn’t get seen that way. If a client is difficult and they sometimes are, it does not make it easy to treat them with respect but still, it is what they get. And if a young twenty-something mishears or misunderstands something, then it is too bad for me since the young twenty-something’s father is the supervisor’s supervisor. There’s no way I can win.

So his father came back to the office today and the young twenty-something is due back tomorrow, as blissfully oblivious as he was before he left. Or maybe not. Perhaps he had a road to Damascus transition and will be repentant. I know, that ain’t gonna happen.

On my lunchtime stroll around Tribeca, I decided to walk over to West St and add some more steps to my counter, but once I started in that direction I had changed my mind and walked down Greenwich Street instead.

I just had to check to make sure it was Greenwich Street and not Greenwich Avenue. I still can’t get them straight after all these years.

And as I walked down Greenwich Street I looked up and saw the World Trade Center and thought to myself that I was glad I was not down in this part of Manhattan 23 years ago. It was bad enough watching from Midtown back then and having seen a few documentaries on that tragedy, I know the area fairly well, at least well enough to identify some locations where interviews were made and footage was shot.

I suppose it is a confluence of what I am feeling. The depression of the job situation, the presidential campaign, the state of the world, and death. Death is always there. I’m in no rush to meet death not at all but I know that one moment you might be here and the next moment you might not. It all harkens back to Mother’s Day in 1991.

That’s why I freak out a bit when Bill who is generally an endless font of words suddenly gets silent. Bill understands that freak out.

My last freak out of the day. Some people still do not know how to wear a mask properly. The majority of people that I see wearing masks these days wear them below their nostrils and only over their mouths (sometimes).

I don’t understand it, and I joke to myself that they are more than likely mouth breathers, but there I go again… It’s simple enough to understand how to wear a mask, they’ve had 4 years!