Day One

I gave my official four-week notice today after Cafe Gypsy's staff meeting. The exchange with my boss, Duke Devy, was anticlimactic to the point of not needing any sort of narration.

I was neither forever banished from the Cafe, nor was there any futile pleading or counter-offering. Not even something so subtle as a sigh. Contrary to my expectations, Duke was cool about the whole thing. He was very cool, in fact. Maybe too cool... or maybe I'm just looking for a story where there is none.

I told Pat Pillar--the lovable but inscrutable scamp-customer of Cafe Gypsy--about having given my notice. He, too, reacted contrary to my expectations; shocked and inconsolable, he asked me what I was going to do with all of my time.

Suckled by a trust fund, he of all people knows the treachery of not having an occupation. My quitting was a mutation of a routine that he constructed to keep his days filled with things to do, a bird's nest of mundane activities: sleeping, eating, browsing the web, frequenting a restaurant filled with muses and beauties...

Because what really is there to do all day, everyday? This is the Grendel of unemployment, the manifestation of some deeper human deficiency that I will certainly encounter over the next few months of self-employment.

Or maybe I'm looking for some sort of purpose, a story in myself where there is none.