Kate set four alarm clocks this morning for six o’clock, a necessary precaution to make it to work by seven. I got out of bed and as I walked past the mirror I unfortunately saw myself, looking as if I’d been asleep for ten years.

But then I got excited because it snowed last night, and I decided that I’d go out and take pictures before the whole loud world woke up. I drank like seven cups of coffee and headed out.

The world is loud, man, I don’t mean to complain about mundane things, but right now somebody is operating a leaf blower (in the snow), and its this constant loud annoying on and off of an engine specifically built to annoy the hell out of people. It might as well spray itching powder while its at it. Its far too early for leaf blowing.

Which is why I can’t do a landscaping job… OK, working at UC Santa Cruz there was this general hippy ethic that you didn’t really douse things in chemical solutions in order to make them grow. Around here its considered the work of God to plant bio-engineered pansies in rows next to astro-turf and then to coat in a few millimeters of anti-life solution. Many hyphens in that last sentence. In fact, I’m not kidding, I’ve read a ‘series’ in the local paper (two stories, should have been zero) about the big growing business around Nevada City: brush clearing. So rich scum buy promising real estate so that they can have a longer commute to jobs that they hate, and they look at their land, and they think to themselves, what if this were just… lawn. So they literally, quite sadly literally hire people to plow down every living thing, brush, trees, animals, flatten it, just flatten it, so that they can have a nicer view of the highway from their mcmansion. This is a true story, I wish I were making it up.

And then food serving. First of all, it is highly desirable to have a (very expensive) college degree (in music, so it almost doesn’t count, unless you live in Berlin) and work a food serving job. Everything you could wish for really. But that’s fine, I can’t knock it for now (desperate) because you can make a lot of money and literally be asleep in terms of actual responsibility, which sounds like shucking the idea of responsibility, but that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that you can go home and start right away to do whatever it is that you care about doing (in my case music) because its as if you just rolled out of bed mentally.

And there are so many positions for ‘admin asst’ out there, which basically is shorthand for ‘do the work I don’t feel like doing’. Including the ever stimulating data entry, for companies you can’t comprehend staying out of the red financially. Maybe someday you will be elevated to the person who buys everyone frappe’s a few times a day from the Starbucks down the block. Yay.

That’s my ever so optimistic outlook on jobs at the moment. I need to get it out of my head because it makes me insane how flat the world can seem some time, constantly striving for the lowest point.

But I do need work, badly. I need work to keep my hands from becoming idle. I need work because it makes me feel good. I like doing good work, and getting things done. That’s part of the reason I enjoy making music, I feel like there is an ultimate end that I have trained myself to get to (almost there) where I can produce quality music because I know how. Not as product, don’t get me wrong, music ultimately will never be product, but as something filled with intention. Good intention.

When I work I can focus on something intensely. I would not notice an earthquake if it happened to take out my neighborhood, I do not notice fluctuations in temperature, the need for food or hydration, I do not lose focus for anything. Its satisfying.

I took some pictures this morning, and now I’m creating the next project. I’m spending my days thinking about how I’m to pay rent somehow. I can’t wait to not have to think that thought.