I think 4 days straight is the most I’ve taken off from this job. I may have done 5 days but I’m not sure. I’ve never really taken a vacation the way others do.

I am quite sore today and not feeling particularly sharp. I decided to get three vaccines in one go. At a Walgreens on 3rd Avenue I got jabbed for Flu, Covid, and Shingles. I have to follow up with another shot for shingles in 3 or 4 weeks, I think. The shots left me with a slight headache, woozy, and generally tired. But I got around town anyway. I looked at the little statues of the composers over the old Steinway Hall, which appears to still be vacant since Steinway moved to its new location on 6th Avenue. I am yet to enter the new location.

Everything changes but the midtown I knew and loved is largely gone. Mangia, even before it left its 57th Street location, stopped making my favorite sandwich, one I could never recreate on my own owing mostly to the bread. It was black forest ham and brie with watercress on black bread. Best sammie in midtown but they axed it some years ago, and now they are gone altogether from that location. Next door, a couple of doors down, the Plaza Deli till holds court, even though it closed maybe 30 years ago. That was my alternate to Mangia, and a far cry at that.

Aha, a web search seems to indicate that Mangia moved around the corner. I missed it yesterday. But they probably still don’t make the greatest sandwich that ever existed so it’s no use for me. Long gone was the exquisite Wine and Apples, further over toward 8th Avenue, I think. Compared to now, with its Billionaires Row and gaudy towers where very few people actually live, it’s hard to imagine a place like Wine and Apples coexisting. It disappeared long ago. There is a diner on East 57th, I think it’s near Lexington Avenue, that might still have something like a Wine and Apples vibe but I don’t know. I’m priced out of pretty much everything these days.

I took a new route to work today. W train all the way from Astoria to Cortland Street. I was earlier than usual but still did not expect the train to be so empty, and is stayed mostly empty all the way through Manhattan. The return trip on the W is my new legend. It’s like a secret passage, with trains arriving from Brooklyn almost empty and air conditioned. No stressful stransfers at Times Square or 59th Street, with its endless stairs that have become more intimidating to me as the weight of my bag seems to increase daily.

My big achievement having 4 days off was moving my Plex server to a new machine. I got one of those Mini-PC things for a couple of hundred bucks (payable interest free for 6 months) and intend to make it a dedicated Plex server. It’s already up and running I just need to figure out the details of keeping the machine turned on 24/7.

I was pretty geared up for doing this but the more I went through the motions I became strangely depressed. I don’t even know why. Maybe it was the eternity of music and movies I have on my server that I will never have time to watch. I imagined turning myself in at Bellevue for observation. Three days is what I’m told they need to evaluate certain types of people. But that’s when they take you involuntarily. I considered calling 988 but their surveillance and location-tracking is scary as fuck. Even if I figured out how to spoof calls to look like they’re coming from somewhere else I suspect they’d have my number, so to speak. I had called NYC-WELL a few years ago but was unimpressed with whoever I talked to. She was just kinda going along with things but I mentioned masturbation suddenly she wanted to get me off the phone asap. I wasn’t trying to be creepy or shocking, it’s just a word that made sense in the moment. But she was not having it. I thought with these kind of support lines pretty much anything goes. Maybe that’s just me being selfish.

I can’t really call these places safely anymore since the payphones are almost all gone. There is no way I would use a LinkNYC machine for that kind of conversation, although I have heard others doexactly that, have ersatz therapy sessions for all the world to hear since the only way to be heard through one of those things is to scream.

I need someone to talk to but my options are limited.