01.08.02 - 5:11 p.m.

Dave Thomas is dead. How sad. As Max said, "Poor Wendy." I wondered when this was going to happen ever since his heart surgery a few years ago. All those triple bacon cheeseburgers just can't be good for you, but Dave just kept on rolling them out. I also feel bad for people who die at the beginning of the year, because then everyone forgets about them until the big end-of-the-year tributes in People and EW. It seems like people who die at the end of the year get a lot more play.

Feeling much better today, thanks for asking. I took my vitamins, as I have been doing dutifully since Moomy gave me the bottle for Christmas, and ate an orange for lunch as an added bonus. I think the fact that it's sunny and not all sleety snow outside helps. Yesterday I cried while letting my feet take me to the subway, and then again while walking from the Path to my house. Carey says that crying on the streets of New York is perhaps the loneliest thing, but I cry pretty much everywhere, so maybe I'm not the best person to ask. Crying on the streets isn't too bad. Crying on airplanes at night seems to be lonelier to me.

And I just reread all my entries from the end of the magazine project through September - my whole summer - and Andrew is right. I am a better writer than I give myself credit for. Maybe because they are my life experiences and I can remember them more vividly than anyone else, that might have something to do with it, but damn!, they are just funny.

I quote from Andrew's last email because one should always write down compliments; they make you feel good.
"You're a good designer, and a better writer than you give yourself credit for, and you shouldn't let those skills go to waste....Hope you don't mind my nibshitting tendency to dispense advice. But I really do mean it when I say you're a good writer. Like when you described your copy machine as having been "light-sabered" down the middle. That's vivid and original and also refers [however slightly] to that sort of entertainment writing you'd be super at.)"

And also from my entry dated July 28, when I had just begun this whole career searching madness:
"Here is my plan: get a job, use September to find an apartment in NY, move, be happy. Plan B is only slightly different, and involves the getting of the job somewhere in between the 'move' and 'be happy' stages."

I did it! I did Plan B! I actually followed through on something!

And that makes me very happy indeed.