Desperate Times

This is one of those entries.

The sort of entry I have to write when I don't even know who I can talk to anymore but I can't just keep it in.

Deep-seated loneliness is now secondary to the fear that I don't know how to support myself. A fear made more acute having just paid a slew of bills.

I've never had too much trouble finding a regular job. I could find long-term office work through temp agencies and get by. This path eventually led to working at Bear Stearns where I had my longest-term station in which I ascended the ranks and became very good... at working for Bear Stearns.

Now the safety net of Bear Stearns is gone and it seems that the "presentation center" industry has evolved to the point where I can't get back in without some specific expertise. Along with that, the old stand-by temp agencies aren't placing people as simply as they seemed to do a few years ago. The entirety of my formal education is in being a writer. And teaching isn't even an option because I don't even have a masters.

My screenwriting career broke through back in 2006 and I continue to have projects I'm juggling at various stages, but they're all speculative. Writing treatments (proposals) with the promise of some future payday. I have been pushing forth on this front very hard this year and had hoped that I'd be on a major project by now. It's just a terrifying waiting game. A feast and famine career path. And it's increasingly a challenge to commit focus to these various narratives when I'm so concerned about how I'm going to make basic ends meet, in the short- and long-term.

Family can't really help me. And they live all over the map (Oregon, Florida, Maine), so I can't even turn to them for a place to crash for a while. Sending resumes out for jobs I don't really want, with the flickering hope that I'll be considered for them. Trying to scale back on everything. Trying to focus on the writing projects as much as I can. Doing as much as I can, and I don't know what I'm doing.

I'm panicked and I can't afford to panic. I've had a really long stretch of working on faith and the road's about to end.

Christ, this is an awful downer entry for a Friday.

If anyone has any leads, contact me. Please.