remember when Monday was the start of a workweek?

I wake up each day with one thought: Where will I find a job?

I have never in my lifetime seen the economy like this.

Postings on the job sites I check each day and repeatedly are dwindling and drying up more and more. I can really spot the change over the past few months. Not that it was an abundance in August. Even the state job site, which used to be sorta "rich" with jobs, is grim.

Now days will pass before a new opening appears.

I feel sorry for employers, they get flooded with resumes. I want to tell them it's fine that you didn't respond and mean it. But it would be a lie because even in this extraordinarily nutso economy, it offends my deep value in common courtesy and recognition of another with a simple thank you. I am definitely out of step with society's evolvement into rudeness and generally poor manners and lack of consideration.

I miss the grace of Japan every single day of my sorry life in this culture.

Jobswise we're coming into the slow season. As if it could get any slower. But it can and it will. For the first time ever in a life filled with work (and yes seedy crap jobs but still work) I face the very real possibility that I may not be able to find employment now or in three months and who knows in six.

That terrifies me more than death itself because when you are dead, you don't need a job. Besides, I am an incurable workaholic. I would like to be less of one but being unemployed isn't the way to go about it.

I am wondering whether because of the economy I will have to leave Tacoma to get a job. The very thought absolutely breaks my heart, it destroys me. This is my home, the only home I have had and known outside parts of Japan.

It took me decades of travel and bad moves to arrive here, physically but more so internally. I don't know what I will do. I love it so much here. I'm supposed to be here. Tacoma is called the City of Destiny. It is my destiny for sure. Perhaps one day I will share the tale of how I ended up here. It is magical. Of spirit and light.

Openings are scarce. Today I'm driving 19 miles (29 km) to put in an application for a food service job at a casino I found online last night. The deadline's today so there's no time for mailing and they don't take faxes. I'll drive up, hand it over and drive back and do it before the insane Seattle commute. God there's a city I never want to live in just for a job though "logically" it's the place to go, one I hope I never have to live in.

These are a few thoughts on this Monday, typically the start of a workweek, oh, such music to my ears; when I tap the bell with a stick, no sound emanates.