I'm Moving. Again.

I predict light posting because tomorrow I'll be moving. Again. My tenure here at housesitting assignment #1 has ended, and housesitting assignment #2 begins on April 1st, and my wonderful friend Tracy has a zip car all ready to help me move with tomorrow. (Fortunately, the lovely and generous Jocelyn--housesitting assignment #1 to most of you--is allowing me to keep most of the heavy stuff in her basement for a while, so Friday's move should be just simple things: clothes, laptop, toiletries, DVDs. I may not even need more than a few books.)

So I'll spend the next two to four weeks housesitting in New Jersey. Then I'll be moving. Again. If I don't have a job (and I'm mostly counting on teaching, so I don't think they'll be hiring in April), I'll be probably moving temporarily to one of those crazy $125-a-week places I lived in before, way the hell up past Harlem. From there, I'll be living on my continued unemployment (while looking for decent work and tossing out freelance articles and eating rice and beans), until either a.) I get a job, or b.) my book sells and gives me a decent initial advance, either of which could happen by, say, June. (Which is good, because my unemployment runs out on July 11 or so.)

Either way, on the assumption that this gives me enough money that I can actually afford to move out of whatever dump I occupy at that point, I'll be moving. Again.

With any luck, however, one way or another I'll be in a decent pay grade for a decent amount of time, and it'll be a good long time--dare I say years?--before I have to move. Again.

(A friend of mine who lives here once told me, "Until you have an actual career here, there's no reason to own more than you can fit into a cab." I wish someone had told me this earlier, but let me send the word to others: in Manhattan, you are reminded constantly that the Buddha's critique of materialism was dead on.)