Full Time - Day 3

Walked in the cold rain to the library. Sky a gray mass of toxic material, sun blocked out, everything desiring warmth and light but little to be found.

Studied chess for 6 hours and also set up a phone interview for part time accounting work, will take the call tomorrow at 11:00am, so if I do go to the library it will be in the afternoon.

Chess material studied -

Read First Steps : Caro Kann (Martin) -

g14 Ivanov/Vladimirov; g15 Gheorghiu/Hort;

subgame - Gligoric/Petriosian (J)

Read How to Learn From Your Defeats (Karpov)

Geller/Karpov 1976; Karpov/Geller 1981(J)

Read Chess Scandals (Edmondson) -

g22 - French (J)

Full Time - Day 2

The earth is dying, the sky is white and gray, filled with whatever the airplanes are dropping and places that should be warm are cold and places that should be cold are warm and the sun is permanently muted.

Trying to stay positive I focus on things I enjoy, so today I walked in the cold rain to Harold Washington Library and studied chess for 5 hours.

Read First Steps : Caro Kann (Martin) -

g12 Karjakin/Mamedyarov; g13 Yifan/Rapport (J)

Chessbomb Random - (J)

GRENKE Chess Classic 2019 round 09

Caruana, Fabiano (USA) - Aronian, Levon (ARM)

Read Chess Scandals (Edmondson) - g21 QGD (J)

It's Your Move, 8-9 (J)

Full Time - Day 1

I have decided to write a journal entry every day during my time of looking for an activity which pays money (wage work). Being born into wage slavery one of the themes of my existence has been the need to gather money in order to survive. Most of my adult days have been spent working inside warehouses, factories, and offices, earning low wages at a high cost of time. It is peculiar how I have not been able to solve the solution of this thorny problem, or, the solutions I have come up with have only been half-good at best. My current days are being spent without having to give away my most precious commodity, Time, and this is the best I have been able to do with the problem - work for long stretches of time, years, until my savings can support myself for at least 1 year, and then quit and live being in full possession of my time.

My current circumstances have allowed me to quit my office clerk work at the Art Institute of Chicago in September, 2018. I then lived in SE Asia for 16 weeks from November, 2018 - March, 2019. I am living in downtown Chicago with a woman and we do not plan on renewing our lease when it ends in November, 2019. Because I will be needing to look for a place to live during September/October I will need to be employed to make it possible for me to sign a year long lease, so I am beginning to look for work this month and already have had a very short time working for Upton's, which did not work out and so my job search will be ongoing, M-F, until I am able to land somewhere.

Today I plan to go to the Harold Washington Library to study their chess reference books, I will write more about what I study when I return home this evening.....

This is what I studied while at the library - 

Read First Steps : Caro Kann (Martin) -

g9 Ehlvest/Timman; g10 Lenic/Ragger g11 Q/K (J)

Chessbomb Random - (J)

GRENKE Chess Classic 2019 round 08

Svidler, Peter (RUS) - Carlsen, Magnus (NOR)

Read Chess Scandals (Edmondson) -

g20 Caro-Kann (J)

Read How to Learn From Your Defeats (Karpov)

Karpov/Torre 1976; Torre/Karpov 1977(J)

Analyze M's rd's 1-4, B Wright Open (J)

Training the Mind

Played a lot of poker this week and lost a bit, am exhausted from the effort so plan to take a break from the cards and the casino and to focus more on reading, running, and reflecting upon what I might do in future days with my time. While I do love playing poker, it is not a viable long term activity due to the variance of luck and my relatively small poker funds. So it would be wise to begin imagining other activities which I would find to be valuable to pursue and participate in. I am always coming back to spiritual endeavors such as meditation and finding ways to remain at peace in a chaotic world. With my life span coming ever closer to its end point I should not delay the training of my mind.

Poker Monk Redux

After accepting the job offer from Upton's I began to regret losing my time to play poker. While I had decided to stop playing due to wanting to keep my winnings, I could not ignore the fact that I missed an opportunity to pursue something that I love to do. Working 8 hours everyday doing something which I feel neutral toward is fine due to it providing a low risk solution to obtaining money, but how much sweeter and fulfilling it is to do something one loves. The catch with poker is it does not guarantee an income so it has to be approached with having a poker fund which if extinguished will cause little to no financial harm. Now that I have my time and space returned to me due to the Upton's job not working out I have decided that if I lose my current poker fund (starting fund $800, currently at $1662) it would not cause me financial harm and so I will be returning to poker play as long as my time remains my own.

This afternoon I participated in a $100 bounty tournament, no real hands of note, I was card dead most of the time, won no bounties, and lost my final hand when I had AQ suited to KK. I busted out somewhere in the middle.

 

04/18/19	$100 buy in Tournament	Result - 25/50 - $0
$1662 – 100 – 52 = $1510	$1/$2 cash game -$52 loss

4 1/2 hours

 Walking Home, Kinzie Street

My job at Upton's as a bookkeeper lasted 4 1/2 hours. I arrived at 9:30am, went through a pleasant orientation for an hour with Ella, was introduced to the 6 or 7 office workers, then I started to train with Glen. Glen is a very smart man, too smart because I could not follow what he was up to, I had no time to take notes and he seemed not to notice that I was falling further behind the ship with each passing hour. It did not help that the computer I was using is an Apple, which I have never used, and that I have no experience with QuickBooks, so while trying to navigate basic program functions I also had to organize a plethora of accounting details for 3 separate companies within a company. Glen talked quickly and changed subjects just as fast. At noon I had decided that I would most likely not be returning for a second day and by 1:30pm I was thoroughly lost in a maze of chaotic numbers. At 2:00pm I told Glen I was taking a break and I took my bag and jacket and left the building and walked home. In most circumstances this type of action would be unthinkable for me, but it appeared to be the best choice today because I felt I could no longer do any work due to my confusion, Glen was unapproachable due to his perceived impatience, and the office has no offices, just open cubes with no privacy so I imagined the scene I would cause if I told Glen I was quitting due to my inability to comprehend what he was saying. I decided to write a detailed email to Ella, the woman who hired me, to tell her why I was quitting, apologize for my abrupt and unexpected departure, and to keep whatever they owe me. This I did and Ella kindly replied telling me we could have worked things out had I not left so quickly but she understood and wished me well and offered to pay me for the hours I put in. I obviously don't feel happy with how things turned out but I have to accept the circumstances as they roll in and now I have my freedom of space and time returned to me, $18,000 in the bank, and I can look forward to reading more novels and even perhaps going on a few jaunts to make some photos of the Hubbard Street murals.

Of Human Bondage

 "Philip was no longer interested in art; it seemed to him that he was able to enjoy beauty with greater force than when he was a boy; but art appeared to him unimportant. He was occupied with the forming of a pattern out of the manifold chaos of life, and the materials with which he worked seemed to make preoccupation with pigments and words very trivial" - Of Human Bondage

A couple of week ago I checked out a number of novels from the Harold Washington Library because having plenty of leisure time for the spring and coming summer I decided reading many good books would be a productive way to pass the time. I took out Bukowski, Maugham, Steinbeck, Hesse, and a few others. I finished reading Post Office by Bukowski the day I received the Upton’s job and I have been reading Of Human Bondage by Maugham and am just a few chapters away from finishing it. Maugham is a writer I like, the prose is clear, concise, and his narrative voice is god-like in its confident philosophy and morality. Of Human Bondage is a long book if I consider the number of pages (600+), but I am so engrossed in the story of Philip Carey that I was able to finish it in less than two weeks.

Tomorrow I begin my own adventures in human bondage, returning to the space and time ideas of others. My days will no longer be free and easy, the long light of day taken up with such things as accounts payable and bank reconciliation. 

Working and Walking

I begin my new job at Upton's in a couple of days so today, Saturday, I decided to time my planned walking route to the work site. I know I can cover 1 mile in approximately 20 minutes and the route appears to be ~3 miles, so I guessed that the walk would take 1 hour which means I should leave the condo at 7:45am, giving myself a 15 minute cushion to account for unknown variables which would cause delay. Today's walk took 63 minutes walked at a leisurely pace. I walked down Grand the majority of the way, on the walk back I decided to try quieter streets and was pleasantly surprised how much better the walk was due to lower traffic and reduced noise levels. A large portion of the walk back was on Hubbard and I discovered a large number of murals (50+) painted on a long railway overpass which is 1 mile in length. I plan to make photos of some of these murals and post them here, many of them are quite stunning and beautiful.

Two Transitions

Last week I stopped at the Harold Washington Library to browse the literature section and also to begin a tentative and initial effort at looking for wage work. I had my resume and cover letter and references made up from years ago so I updated the resume to include the Art Institute of Chicago as my last place of employment and applied to four places which I found advertised on Craig's List and Indeed. A couple of days later I heard from one of the places, Upton's Naturals, for an accounting clerk position. I talked to a woman on the phone for 10 minutes and at the end of the conversation she asked me to interview with the co-owner later in the afternoon, so I showered and walked 3 miles to west Grand Ave and had a decent interview and then I walked home in the rain and when I arrived I found that the woman who initially called  had emailed me and wanted me to send her my references, which I did, and the next day I was offered the position, which I accepted. I begin working on April 15h, well ahead of my planned schedule of leisure which was to continue through the summer and into the autumn.  I began applying for jobs this soon because I know it takes a number of months before a job materializes and I decided by putting in a small effort in April I could have everything ready and get some practice at applying and interviewing. The odds of receiving a job offer which I found acceptable on the first day of trying has to be quite high, 1 in 500 I am guessing. So the job gods have decreed I should cut my leisure time short and begin another round of being employed for wages. The negative is I will no longer have my freedom of space and time, while the positive is my savings are still quite healthy for monk standards, sitting at $18,000. My rate of pay is higher than I am accustomed to ($20/hour, after 3 months $21/hour), and with my monk style living habits I should be able to save $1100-1300/month. My intitial work goal is to last six months, until November 1st, at which time I should have $28,000 in savings, which would sustain me for two years without having to work.

The other transition I am passing through is the woman I am living with recently told me she wants to end our romantic relationship, however she is fine with keeping me as a roommate. I have decided that I should be fine living with her in a platonic way and with the lease ending on November 1st I can then decide if I want to strike out on my own or remain another year in a downtown condo living with an ex-lover.