despite all the fancy window dressing most of us are just peasants. i know i am. i can’t even make a living wage, man. i feel so anxious and depressed and i haven’t eaten more than two or three meals in about as many days.

i’ve started talking to myself when i’m alone on a street. it’s just comforting to me. sometimes i have to jolt myself back to earth by doing that. it’s something to do, anyway. i use a perfectly calm and reasonable voice. i don’t actually feel like that at all. i have to use that voice so i don’t freak out anymore than i already am.

i keep seeing these older guys in their forties and fifties who kind of look like me, or dress like me, or talk like me, and they don’t have it together at all. they’re not bad people but they’re obviously broke and miserable and they’ve never been able to make it work. my fear is that i’m going to be that weird old guy who talks to you at the hostel breakfast table. you tell him you’re in town on vacation and he says he has nobody and no place else to go.