This week, a friend had a 4th of July party, and as she was introducing me around, she told people all about my year off and my “hilarious” blog.
She asked why I hadn’t been posting and kept reiterating that I was a good writer.
Well, the compliment kicked me into gear, – the reason I haven’t been writing is because unemployment has become a bit of a purgatory that I seem to have banished myself to. I’ve spent the last couple of months trying to unlock the gates and escape the cave, but nothing has worked – yet.
Oh, and I’ve been spending a lot of time on the bus.
And nothing makes you feel more like you are stuck in purgatory than taking the bus, in Los Angeles.
So, as a reintroduction to anything funny that has been happening in my life – I’d like to offer up this week’s bus story:
I’ve been volunteering at a horse sanctuary, mucking out stalls, playing with horses, getting reacquainted with my allergies, and developing muscles. It’s been glorious – but, to get there takes about 2.5 hrs on the bus. To get back takes over 3.
There is a special kind of horrible mood that I develop when I smell like manure, am physically incapable of walking or standing, am being prodded by tiny bits of pokey hay, am super hungry and seem to miss every one of three, sometimes four bus connections.
This week was particularly bad – the first bus just didn’t show up – after twenty minutes, I asked Google to find another way home. One bus later, I found myself at a stop in the middle of nowhere, waiting alone, with a man who had gotten kicked off the last bus. I patiently listened to his story of asshole bus drivers and quietly hoped someone else would show up. No one did.
The next bus took me to another stop where I met a lovely woman who was having trouble walking because she had just had open heart surgery. She wanted to talk. I wanted to crawl into a hole and drink a cup of tea.
The penultimate bus involved a man who decided that the bus was his pulpit, and the passengers, his congregation. He gave us a speech on his life and said that if Barbara Streissand could get $150M for her autobiography, he could surely get $100M for his.
And now we come to our last bus, where, whilst waiting at the stop, I returned my sister’s call – a call she said that would cheer me up with the fact that she had a story to make me feel better about my life.
It sounds evil, but sometimes those stories are really, really needed. So, hopefully this story can help someone else.
#keepingthechinup