I took 2 days off from work, combined with two regular days off amounting to 4 days unmoored. 4 days of not knowing what to do or where to go. Sunday and Monday were rain days, which seemed to enhance whatever feeling of misery I already knew. Misery is the word, I think. There has been something rotten at the bottom of my gut. It twitches at times but mostly it is sedenatry, rotten and a magnet for any feelings of optimism or happiness. I have no one to talk to, really. My office situation has changed up enough that I can actually have conversations with people. But I can’t talk here about the rotgut weighing me down, or the shameful hardness in the sides of my head that I swear have texture and smell. It smells like a pool of spit, or a healthy bone with nothing to support. My life feels like a bone, or a boner with nothing to fuck. I don’t feel good. Maybe today’s return to work will smooth things over. I have felt OK here. Not perfect but OK. The job hanged and it is a lot less chaotic, less psychologically abusive. I remember starting this job and thinking how perfect it was for someone like me, who is vulnerable to abusive relationships. This job was that. An abusive relationship. The job is not so bad now. I feel sadness of a different order. Heaviness. This happens on my days off. This is what happened for about 5 years before starting this job. I had nothing to do, but I knew I had everything to do. So much waste in this life. What will it be today, anyway, at this place of work? Where is anything here going? I think the work we do here is good. It is not perfect but it means well. I wanted this job for a long time. Most people here barely even knew what this company was when they took the job. I knew pretty well but knew I did not know everything. I’ve learned some interesting things about New York on this job. The location of a pauper burying ground in Flushing is a recent discovery. I remember hearing that grand pianos were being dumped illegally on the side of the road in Astoria. I knew I had to see that, and I did. But these are small prizes. I wanted to make connections with people. That’s generally not allowed but in a couple of cases I did try. Why do I feel so much like I am falling today? All week since Sunday I am falling. I went up to Washington Heights yesterday, the part I never knew when I lived at 9 Cabrini. The part north of 181st Street is beautiful, at least in places. I found Bennett Park, site of the highest natural point in Manhattan. The cannon was there but I think I missed most of the park’s things to see on account of not wanting to look like a pedophile. There is a children’s playground there and, for whatever reason, I’ve lately been encountering accounts of single men  getting arrested for simply being in or near a children’s playground without a child of their own. I don’t want to be that person. So I did not use the bathroom at Bennett Park because the kids were there. I waited all the way until Penn Station maybe 2 hours later. I thought there was a Target on Broadway around 178th Street. I was planning to pee there. But the Target is gone, if it was ever even there. I waxed somewhat nostalgic about the 2 years I lived in WH and then Inwood. But I spent most of th estramble in the parts of WH I never knew. The tonier enclaves. Will breakfast and the company of co-workers lift my spirits? I don’t know. No one has said it outloud but I detect some disapproval over me being in this role already. Most people in this group had been here for many years longer than I’ve been around. It’s not a promotion, since there is no more money, but it is considered a place for top performing individuals, and being in this group is kind of the envy of others. Still, some didn’t get here for 5 years. I was hired after just one year, though actually making the transition took longer than expected. I don’t really care, except that in the 8 or so months between getting the job and starting it I nearly quit 4 times. I decided not to. I would regret it. And no one even cares. If you quit this job nobody cares. Nada.  Nobody will try to change your mind or make you stay. No one is that valuable. I don’t feel good today. Don’t feel like I should be here. Just talked to somebody about this job. It felt stale. Muted words spoken for the sake of speaking them. I went to a bar yesterday. To be among people. Not to talk to anyone, since that doesn’t work out for me anymore. Oh, there is the woman on the train. She has gone maskless and I am not certain she is really who I thought she was all this time. Certain behaviors align but her backpack is different and she doesn’t carry a certain other bag she almost always used to have. Is it really her? It has to be, I think. She goes to the same office building as before. The chances that this is a similar-looking woman how just happens to be traveling the same paths as someone else is unlikely. I am not in love with her or anything, just interested in her work and seeing where she goes with it. It is cold as hell in here. Gotta get moving.