This notebook starts at the beginning of September, 2009. The previous notebook ends at the end of May, 2009. So there's a gap of a little over three months between the end of the twentieth notebook and the beginning of the twenty-first.
I'm not sure why this is. I believe it may have been due to my having come pretty close to a nervous breakdown during this time period. But I've also been thinking lately that, at some point during this time period, I may have decided to throw all of my writing away. I'm just not sure. I can't remember it very well.
This notebook starts with me finishing up my time at a temporary job I worked at for a few months while I was looking for a replacement permanent job. I had lost my previous job due to the financial crisis at the beginning of 2009. I had gotten a pretty decent severance package. So I spent the first couple months of unemployment writing a screenplay. Then I started running out of money and had to go back to work to supplement my severance pay. I started that job near the beginning of July, 2009. That job was horrible. I left in frustration around the middle of September.
For the following couple of months I kept looking for another job. Toward the end of October, I got back in touch with a person who had mentioned at the beginning of the year that he might like to hire me. After a few weeks of waiting to hear once and for all whether I was actually going to be hired, I began to doubt that I would be hired. I was eventually hired, but not until after the time period of this notebook.
One interesting thing to see is how, toward the end of this notebook, my entries are increasingly from cafes in Brooklyn. I believe what I'd do at this point in time was read and write at a cafe until about 11 AM or noon, then walk, either through Brooklyn or across a bridge and into Manhattan. I'd study at a library until 5 PM or so. Then I'd head home. Sometimes I wouldn't even do that. I'd just study, then take a two-hour walk, then head home.
I think the most uncanny dream in this notebook is my dream of my great grandmother's death. This dream occurred over two months before my great grandmother died. I'm not sure how many times I've dreamed of my relatives, including my great grandmother, dying. I don't know whether the dream was precognitive. But it certainly seems to me like a meaningful coincidence.
No comments:
Post a Comment