Things To Do While Waiting For The # 16 Bus

- Come up with a to-do list (daily, weekly)

- Check voicemail, text messages

- Check the skies for precipitation

- Shuffle through iPod

- Think about set lists for next round of mix CDs

- Think about the film I just watched

- Daydream about past events, future goals (Is eight months of unemployment a deal-breaker during a job interview? Will I ever be contacted for an interview? Is 37 too old to turn one’s life around? Why did she lose interest and move on? Could I have done anything to prevent it? Will the future be Star Trek utopia or Blade Runner dystopia? Is it possible to be truly happy while acknowledging history and paying attention to current events, or is the cliché about being blissfully ignorant true? Will I ever be “a writer“, whatever that title means? Is Obama a progressive Trojan horse or just another centrist corporate Democrat, Clinton part II? Do I really care about politics, or was my obsession during the campaign rooted in some deeper psychological need? Does anyone read my blog, or is it like the tree falling in the forest that no one hears? Do I dare start making my blog more personal and confessional, or should I stick to political rants and Top 10 lists?)

- Be in the moment, watch traffic flow, birds, squirrels; notice for-sale signs, businesses going under, commerce taking place

- Wonder how Jane Jacobs would rate Seattle's urban planning

- Go over job-hunt strategies

- Map out social events for the week

-Ask myself:
1. Have I talked to my mother, father and brother lately?
2. What's playing at the Guild 45th, Neptune, Seven Gables, and Varsity?
3. Why are there so few 16's running?
4. Have I had 8 glasses of water today?

- Keep shuffling through iPod

- Watch people at bus stop, size them up, try to figure out their stories (Are any of these people happy? Do most of them hate their jobs, those that have a job? Most everyone I know is dissatisfied with their work, but is my social circle indicative of the population as a whole? Riding the bus provides a first-hand look at the casualties of George Bush’s America, some of most beleaguered and discarded Americans this side of the Harborview E.R. I can‘t imagine how some of these people survive at the bottom rung of the ladder during this Neo-Gilded Age, but somehow they seem to find ways to eke out an existence in the absence of a social safety net, all the more amazing in that America is the stingiest industrial democracy in the world in terms of public assistance, even in the best of times. “There but for the grace of God go I“ echoes through my head each time I board these busses. I can’t tell if they used to be middle class, or are they the working poor, or are they newly homeless? How many are mentally ill, how many were abused as children, and why don’t we care about our fellow citizens? Maybe it’s too much for us to bear when we realize deep down that each of us is probably only several paychecks and a medical emergency away from begging for spare change outside of QFC and the liquor store.)

- Wonder if monorail expansion will ever be revived during my lifetime

- Feel grateful to live in in a big, progressive, coastal city