When writers return after a hiatus from their blogs, they usually explain that they have been “very busy.” I’ve been busy as well but that’s not why I took a break from blogging. I was just too depressed to bother.

     I was in Virginia this year for Christmas. Early on Christmas Eve I finally got my new novel ready for submission.  After about three and a half minutes of jubilation I sank into depression. When you quit smoking, you wander around for weeks not knowing what to do with your hands. When you finish the third draft of a 100,000 word novel, you have no idea what to do with your brain. What am I supposed to think about now?

     Luckily, poverty came to the rescue. Oh, right. I need to think about money. There I was on Christmas Eve night - job hunting. And because this is America, someone posted a job advert at 6:43 pm and I responded within fifteen minutes. I found that kind of funny in a depressing way. You would never ever ever find anyone in Ireland advertising a job at that hour on Christmas Eve  . . . or during the month preceding it . . . or the three weeks after it.

     I started the job on the first week in January. It is like being in a coma except you are conscious.  I quite like it. Very peaceful. I’ll say that for it and not much else because I have no idea about the best kind of day jobs for writers.  I know you need a job that isn’t going to drain you emotionally and mentally and I know you need it to pay enough so that you are not tempted to fling yourself off Brooklyn Bridge every day. But, I find most of the advice on the net about potential day jobs for writers bewildering. I mean, if I had the kind of cash to go make myself over as a university lecturer, why would I need a day job to sustain my writing career in the first place?

     I spent the first couple of weeks of the New Year hunting for a sublet flat share in Brooklyn through craigslist. Over the last decade a lot of my friends have moved from the city to Brooklyn. But they are much more talented than I am at making money and so they live in four storey brownstones with eight bathrooms in expensive areas like Park Slope or Prospect Heights. I couldn’t afford to live there. So I wasn’t moving to Brooklyn to be closer to them.  I was more inspired by Eddie Murphy’s logic in Coming To America. He decided to move to Queens because he was a prince in search of a wife. I am a writer, and writers, like trees, grow in Brooklyn.

     Nowadays, to get a flat share, you have to text your potential flatmates a link to your FB page. The ads can be a little off-putting – ‘only cool people need apply,’ or, strangely specific - ‘no weird mouse-like people who make others uncomfortable.’ On the plus side, twenty-somethings are refreshingly honest. Here is an actual email exchange:

From O:

Hi S, The loft is huge but all room has walls that were built there, it means that the walls are not real but thin so you can easily hear another person whatever they do. My roommate next to my room has his gf over sometimes and I can hear them so I put my earphones on. It does not bother me but I can see how other people can be bothered.  Also my room does not have a window.  Is it still fine with you? PS now you know all downsides of the place :) I told you all this upfront so that I would not waste your time. Thanks! O”

And here is my response:

   “I appreciate that. Thanks.  Yeah, I don't think I would want to hear them, it would prob make me jealous.  So I don't think that this will work out but thanks for telling me!  Good luck in getting someone. Am sure you will have no problem with that. S”

     I did manage to find a quieter and no doubt less entertaining flat share. It is in an area of Brooklyn which my landlady calls East Williamsburg and everyone else calls Bushwick. It’s about seventy percent immigrants from South America and thirty percent artists/writers/hipsters. I am so much in love with my new neighbourhood that it almost hurts. It’s got the best bagels, the best dive bar, the best pizza and the best coffee shop in Brooklyn. What more could you want?

     I have a twenty-nine-year old flatmate. I don’t know his last name. He is gay, which, in a pretty small apartment makes things very relaxing. Flat hunting was basically the same as it was when I was in my twenties except people are much pickier now and they never use their last names anymore, they just sign themselves with their first names (or initials) and kisses.  And a second go-round of twenty something life is pretty much the same as the first time around as well although it’s much easier because you just don’t care. But, it’s also more exhausting than I remembered. Oh, I guess that’s because I’m older.

     I was a bit depressed about going back to twenty-something life. But I had a revelation that calmed me down. Back in my lawyering days I rented a very expensive apartment in the West Village for two years. The front door was very narrow and the movers couldn’t get the king-sized bed through it. So we just put down the mattress on the bedroom floor and I resolved to buy a double bed. And I went ahead and bought that bed – eighteen months later. Yes, I slept on a mattress on the floor in a super expensive apartment for eighteen months because that’s how long it took me to get around to spending five minutes online ordering a bed. That’s not the conduct of someone who cares about owning stuff. I care about the work; I care about the idea of having the power to buy stuff, not the stuff itself. And b.t.w., there’s a bed in my new room. How handy is that? I am actually ahead!

     And I’m so lucky to get heaps of offers of help in all kinds of ways. Recently, an acquaintance from the distant past offered me some help. I went along to meet him for coffee on a Sunday morning. We didn’t get off to the best start. He was tired and probably hung-over from a late night and seemed annoyed to be there. I was just depressed. I’d received a string of aggressive, bullying sex texts the night before from some anonymous idiot who seemed to know a lot about me. On my conscious mind, I wasn’t bothered by him although thanks to my phone text message plan, I was actually contributing to the cost of those texts.  How annoying was that? But, on a deeper level, I was . . . bothered. I felt so under attack, that when I turned up on Sunday morning, I couldn’t even take off my coat. But we sat down and got talking and I don’t know how much time went by, maybe an hour, maybe two when I suddenly realized that he hadn’t brought up his offer of help. That was a bit embarrassing. In a surge of pride, I thought, fine, I’m not asking him for help, I don’t need his help, ok, we’re done. And his response was to get white-hot angry. It made my blood run cold. You have got to be kidding me. I give up my time to help you and you insultingly dismiss me as if I were your employee! You can bet we’re done now! Let’s go.

     Hmm, he might have had a point. So that was a bit awkward, but luckily since I still had my coat on, it didn’t take much time to get out of there. And I learned something. If you want to have pride, go join the Marines. If you are a struggling writer or struggling at anything, drop the burden of pride, take all the help you can get and say thank-you and be gracious about it, or at least, don’t insult the people helping you or start shouting at them on street corners, ‘I am the people, I am the people.’ That’s just confusing.

     Since then, I’ve had more offers of help. A friend invited me to stay at his place in Arizona, another asked me to go stay at their home in Sardinia and a third offered me the use of her cottage in upstate New York. Novel number seven will get written. I have the best, most generous friends in the world . . . although I notice that none of them have yet taken up my offer to sleep on my couch in Bushwick. I’m not feeling quite so depressed anymore, no, I’m not depressed at all. My new novel is out the door and I love it . . . and I love growing in Brooklyn.