spent much of the day, as i have for some weeks, feeling sorry for myself, wanting out of this lifestyle and this livelihood, wondering where my web traffic went. it’s been bad. today was especially bad, but then i remembered it’s a holiday, and web traffic always sucks when the office workers are not at their desks.

how much longer can i do this? should i do this? it’s been nearly 10 years… well, not quite. maybe 7, or even 6, depending how you define what i do now versus after getting whacked from corporate. February 28 is the decade anniversary of leaving corporate, and my nephew’s 10th birthday.

just not feeling good about myself any more. no confidence. i am not directionless but this unstructured life creates the same sense of ennui.

yesterday was interesting, though. i took my recording gear and a newfound headset/microphone out to the big cemetery for the purpose of delivering a running narrative of the place, for as much as i know about it. i probably know more than most about the obscure burials, or rather those that were once illustrious but would now be considered obscure. a couple of famous bible publishers are out there, along with someone who designed a very famous monument. it is not a star studded burial ground but it’s not without its interesting characters. once i started talking i got into the monologue format and essentially delivered a warm-up for an eventual narrative that would be accompanied by photos of what i’m talking about. it’s not going to be just a typical who’s who, though. it will be about me in some ways.

my work is hampered at times by a stagnant lifestyle and limited technical resources. i have to get a new PC, and that’s a given, but holy shit those things take time to set up and accommodate. and i crave new roofing, new ceiling, new wallage, new windows. i would have to discard a great many things, i think. and i would want to move far away from this place. far away being a relative notion, of course. that was one of my fantasies about living in New York: the feeling that if things got cluttered or uncomfortable in one area i could just up and move 8 blocks away and be in a different world. it seems like most new yorkers never leave the street they live on, save to go to work. i am sometimes spotted by friends and acquaintances in areas far afield from where that close-to-home lifestyle would assume. but anyone who knows me much at all probably knows that i am a desultory flaneur.

for some reason i have Tribeca in mind, if only because i know little about it, and because that area seemed to have a preponderance of pretty girls walking the streets when the Streetview cameras rolled past. i also like upper east side, near my old digs at York Avenue. and the Parc Lincoln would be a hilarious place to move back to.

but really, there is nothing wrong with Astoria. that’s the problem. complacency. ease. why move when the place is fine? why not just travel instead? why try when the work is easy? i also don’t want to be too far from the 181… although a single bi-weekly visit to that shrine would be enough these days… that would be awesome to get a room at the Parc Lincoln, shit into the shared toilet at the end of the hall, and use the 181 as the permanent address, just like 21 years ago.

…..

couple of conspicuous lesbians sucking face at the bar, or i should say conspicuously sucking face at the bar. really fucking annoying. it’s annoying when heterosexuals carry on like this. it’s annoying when dogs carry on, fucking in the schoolyard. who is improved upon or even impressed by unbridled sexual acts in public spaces? who is humiliated or embarrassed? (both those feelings interpretable)

…..

ok so i am going to buy a laminator! hell yeah. i decided that if i am going to do the Payphones Gone But Not Forgotten project i might as well do it right.

for some months, maybe years, i’ve been dropping prints of photos that i have of payphones as they once stood at streetcorners and in alleyways from the mid-1990s to today. most of the payphones are gone, but as a memorial of sorts i’ve left photos of the former payphones at the spots where once they stood.

but i’ve done it half-assed. and my pursuits should be pursued nothing less than whole-assed. i had similar thoughts when i started the old magazines project. at first i thought i could get away with using freeware open source OCR products but i quickly realized that those products were gratuitous crap, and that if i was going to bother doing this at all i might as well do it right and spend the $400 on quality software and spend the $300 on semi-quality hardware. i think i spent about $1000 on all those things, including upgrades and replacements, not to mention what i paid over the years for the magazines themselves.

but that’s all good. that project still needs a creative breakthrough to make it interesting to anyone but me, but i’m happy with it so far.

in a different sense i decided last week that the Payphone Memorial Project needed a similar assertion of seriousness. this is not so much a financial outlay but a resource and time commitment. i am going to laminate the photos, and affix them to the former payphone locations either with super-sticky tape or maybe with nails. whatever it takes to make them more permanent. until now the photos just blew away with the wind, which seemed like an inspired, ephemeral, signatory, salutatory way to commemorate the fleeting payphones of yore. (think of the movie “Big River Man”) But in this urban maelstrom i doubt if a single human being noticed the gesture, and this seems like something that — if i am going to bother doing it at all — should be noticed at least on some small level by those who might remember.

so to the laminator it is!

that gadget is stupid cheap compared to all the crap i had to get for the old magazines…

oh crap they just turned down all the lights in here and i can’t see a goddam thing, fingers pecking frantically at the darkness of the table above my knees.