Blogging Golden Gate Park

I lost my job several weeks ago. I've checked under the couch cushions and in that drawer into which we toss things that used to have a mate, but to no avail. I can't find it or anything like it.

When I first learned I was unemployed I threw myself into the job search with a fervent desire to find work within three weeks. I contacted every recruiter who had ever found me a job, or telephoned me after seeing my resume on an online site, or accidentally hit my shoe when spitting a wad of gum with all the flavor chewed out of it. Some were optimistic, some simply hopeful and most were pathetic liars who understood neither my skills nor the requirements of the jobs they represented. I truly had a woman refuse to represent me because I didn't have expreience with Toshiba laptops. I tried to convince her that most laptops that run Windows are pretty much the same, but the work order asked for a man with Toshiba experience and, by God, she was going to provide it. Never mind that she had a 16-year IT veteran willing to take demeaning work and accept peanuts as payment. She wasn't going to allow me and my non-Toshiba-knowing ass to despoil her reputation.

By the time I had interviewed for, and lost, a position at a Federal Bank for no given reason (and, today, the job - a five month contract - is listed as open on Dice.com. Just how poorly had I interviewed? Did I forget to button my pants? Did they see me swiping office supplies on the way out the door? Did they smell the flask? What?!?!), I felt defeated and depressed. I spent Tuesday of last week unbathed and unshaven, wearing only a t shirt and boxers and reading the user forums on Cartoon Network, adding zesty bon mots to the arguments in favor of telling zeitgeist345 to suck it.

At the end of the day I looked bad, smelled worse and had started a flame war that threatened to consume teh Internets.

By Wednesday, I knew I had to do something differently, if only to keep Cartoon Network from tracking me via my IP address. After driving Elizabeth to the train station, I decided to keep going rather than head home and allow Craig's List to mock me all day with jobs that were only just wrong for me. I went to Fort Point and looked up at the Golden Gate Bridge. I looked back at the city that had been my home for most of the last 26 years. I began to remember what I love about this place and her inhabitants. I began to feel better.

The way home took me through Golden Gate Park. Depending on how you view GGP, it is either the jewel in San Francisco's foggy crown or a tangled mass of ill-kept roads that prevent Richmonders from bumping up against the far superior Sunseteers, but that day I saw it as something else entirely - salvation. I realized I do not know enough about this amazing place and that learning about it would be stimulating. It might bring me out of my funk and give me something to focus on. It would give me confidence and practice writing.

I am blogging Golden Gate Park. For bonus points I have decided to do it alphabetically, but that still leaves me a lot of leeway. For example, is it the National AIDS Memorail Grove that sits adjacent to the Baseball Fields (and, thereby, filed under "N"), or simply the AIDS Memorial Grove? Will I be visiting the Academy of Sciences today, or the CALIFORNIA Academy of Sciences next week? Whichever, I am assuming I will forgive myself if I make mistakes, do things slightly out of order or visit an expensive museum later, when I receive an unemployment check, rather than sooner (I'm looking at you, M. H. deYoung). I hope to learn something, maybe pass on some information and keep myself from going bonkers while searching for external validation in a soul-sucking pit of attorneys.

Let's go.