City begging is really up.

I'm really surprised how much begging is happening in the city on the subway, it seems like a lot more than usual.

Young people, too.

A lot of times, I see someone (Latin) or (black) who's going through asking for money, and they have decent clothes on and don't seem addicted to drugs or anything.

It really must be lack of work, or the general shittiness of jobs out there.

Everywhere I look, the economy just seems weak and listless.  No one can get where they want, and there's this odd energy building up, since their energies are derailed into that, and causing weird restlessness and dissatisfaction.

It's really an abnormal and untenable situation.  Something's got to give.

A reflection of the (quiet) (white) (female) (art kid) bartender...

...who's been working at my one neighborhood bar the past few months:

"It's been an adjustment for me, to guard my emotions."

(She meant with customers, and how she couldn't behave necessarily authentically always, and would have to check herself a lot.)

All this winter I've been getting tired.

All this winter, I've been getting tired, and all I want to do is stay in.

I wonder if part of it's my age, or the low temps, or the fact that I walk 30+ minutes on the days when I go in to work, what with the distance I have to go to and from the subway stops.

I've honestly felt like just sitting on my couch and reading and listening to music, and not going out.

And, if I have one day of that, that's not enough, I need a second day before I have any of my energy back again.

It really is really like I just need to rest.

How odd, for me.

A sight, after that blizzard a month ago:

As I walk to the one subway stop near my house, every once in a while other pedestrians are in the street, since there the pavement is nice and clear, and on the sidewalks some places were unshovelled or difficult to walk through.

For blocks and blocks and blocks, a pedestrian or two in the street, every now and then.

At one point I was in the street too, and a car sped and turned the other way, into the lane across from me, and I suddenly realized how dangerous it was.

Crack of a coworker, on Viagra.

At one of my care-giving jobs, my (white) (middle-aged) (lesbian) coworker was saying that just once she'd love to see people treat Viagra like abortion, and talk to men with erectile dysfunction the way that they talk to women.

"It's God's will," she was like.  "Maybe this happened for a reason."

A sight on the subway the other night:

At like 1am, as I'm about to get off my stop, a (black) man with a huge loaded-up backpack of Icehouse, holding out a can and hawking it to people for a dollar, as a (black) woman stands languidly by his side.

A subway observation.

Like the past few months, every time I've been on the main subway in the city, the cars have really really smelled like urine.

I think it's because it's been super cold out, and people without homes have been staying and sleeping on the cars, in order to stay warm.