It’s raining- I can hear the occasional car’s tires on the wet pavement of Broadway down below, and in the bathroom I can hear it pinging off the vent covers on the roof, since we live on the top floor. From the looks of the water collected on the window screens the rain must have been really heavy last night.

My eyes opened at 5:06 AM, and I lay there thinking, it’s too early to get up. I usually wake at 5:30, automatically, no alarm clock needed. It wasn’t always that way, but having a steady job for 16 years will get you used to it. Or at least it got me used to it; my wife, who often goes to sleep before me, can’t wake up early to save her life. She’ll put the snooze alarm on for 15 minutes, then keep snoozing over and over again.

At 5:15 I realized that I wasn’t going back to sleep, not even for another second, and since it was that much closer to 5:30, I got up. But since I am not currently working, I wondered what I would do. I thought of only one thing, to write, so I am writing.

But first, I made coffee, in my Krupps drip coffee maker. Whole foods French Dark roast. I made the coffee, plugged in the internet (my wife is fond of pulling out all unnecessary plugs before she goes to sleep) and turned on the computer. Just now the 6:01 M train to Manhattan rumbled by my window, the one I am usually on to go to work. I feel guilty, like I should be showered and dressed and sitting on that train. But I’m not, I’m sitting here writing and sipping my strong cup of coffee.

Today the rain at least has a soothing effect, we haven’t had rain in awhile and i imagine the streets are being cleansed they way Travis Bickle did in The Taxi Driver. Also, the sun isn’t glaring its way into my living room blinding me the way it does when it’s not raining, reminding me that I should be out and about and doing something useful.

I guess that’s how I feel, kind of useless, not getting ready to fix someone’s runny toilet or leaking kitchen sink, or a door that won’t close properly because of years of layered paint. It’s been frustrating as hell. The Union Rep called the other day to say my company no longer wants me in that position, they are willing to let me be a Doorman again, or a Porter; and I agreed, being a Doorman is less responsibility and will give me more time to write, but I’ve not heard back from him since.

I am running low on funds, yes I have savings and luckily our tax refund came through the week I was suspended, but I’ve had no income for the past month, save for some money I made hanging fluorescent lights for a friend at his warehouse last week. Worry hovers silently somewhere behind my ears, just out of my peripheral vison.

I’ve used the time the best I can, working out every day (I’ve lost almost 10 pounds!) writing, cleaning the house, going through belongings I don’t need anymore, and writing. I finally got some chapters together and wrote a cover letter for a publisher who expressed interest in a memoir I’m writing and sent it off, that’s a good thing. I’ve been putting that off forever when it occurred to me that whatever the result would be I would never find out unless I sent it in. So I sat down and transferred the edited chapters from my Google drive back to my computer so I could make them Word files again and send them in. Sounds complicated, doesn’t it?

I guess that’s what life is like, a little complicated; things to be done, things to be thought about.

There was a time when I was homeless, that was in 1979; and the only thing I could think about was how I was going to eat that day. Today there are lots more things to think about, but right now I’m going to concentrate on the sound of the rain falling on the window ledge.