So it goes…
I’ve been contending with unemployment and general malaise for the past 3 months. Since losing my job at Best Buy in Orange Park, life has been, for the lack of a better description, a giant ball of shit. Things change though. Things always change. Sometimes those changes are minor and you can deal with it easily. Sometimes the changes are pretty big and you find you can deal accordingly.
And then there’s this bullshit.
I went from barely employed and unhappy to unemployed and suffering from crippling depression. Try getting denied for fucking food stamps, that shit is depressing on a “this would be goddamn hilarious if it were happening to someone else” kind of level. Now I’m going to jobless and poor in Jacksonville to (hyper)actively seeking work and poor in an all new city: Savannah, Georgia. Savannah is an interesting little city. The best way I can really describe it is by referencing various neighborhoods in Jacksonville.
Let’s imagine all of Duval County is laid out on a table as a gigantic LEGO set. Now take the Riverside/Avondale neighborhood, the Mandarin area, and San Marco, and combine them, but leave various spots open on the board so you can sprinkle bits and pieces of Murray Hill, Springfield, and Arlington onto the map (in places you can’t predict). That’s Savannah. A sprawling classical neighborhood with elements of the fucking ghetto hidden on the board like a traps in D&D. (Man, that would make an awesome tabletop campaign…)
And that’s where I will be living for the foreseeable future. It’s strange. I’ve lived in Jax my whole life. I have friends I’ve known since the kindergarten. Now I’m going to be living, working, and learning in a strange new place with little to no friends or family in the immediate area. It’s not totally remote, but remote enough to make it feel daunting to someone with as robust a travel history as I have (read nonexistent).
I have confidence though. Why? Hell, I dunno. I guess when you’re fired and rejected for unemployment and food stamps, you kinda figure, “I guess there’s nowhere to go but UP now…” I’d just like it to be known that I could not have done any of this without all the people in my life, fantastic and otherwise. I would never have gotten off my ass to go back to school had it not been for the blatant idiocy and ignorance of a former manager. To this day I vow I owe him two things for being such an asshole that I decided to change my position in life: 1. Buy him a steak dinner, and 2. Beat him in the face with a stick.
So on June 1st, 2010, I shall make my way forward in life in a new city with new people and new experiences. Thanks, everyone. I’ll update you all periodically on the new digs.
Maybe I’ll post some of my new art next time too…
argo. (mtc)
PS. I’ll be at HeroesCon in Charlotte, North Carolina on June 4-6 with an Artist’s Alley table no. AA-841. If you’re there, come see me. I’ll be selling some prints and doing commissions all weekend.
