The pen is mightier than the bored

When I first moved to Manhattan—penniless, jobless, even furniture-less—I had to find a way from sinking into debilitaing depression while unemployed, hot, and panicked about my fate. My solution? Do something every day. Just one thing.

One day I went in search of peanut butter and jelly sandwich ingredients. The alternate purpose was to explore the various bodegas in my neighborhood, and the results were frustratingly fascinating: not a SINGLE bodega sold all three items required for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. One place had peanut butter but not jelly, another had both but no bread, another had just jelly, etc. It was maddening, since I had yet to discover the fully stocked grocery store around the corner.

A different time I looked for yarn. I can't remember why I was looking for yarn in July, but I think it had something to do with my roommate. I didn't find it. (Though a yarn store opened down the street a year later.)

Another day, it was all I could do to drag myself off the deflated air mattress in my humid apartment. But I had a purpose in life, a mission...and that mission was to find a highlighter. Again I plundered the small stores surrounding me, in search of something more satisfying than the standard yellow marker. I had scored a couple of freelance assignments, and this highlighter was going to make them important, real.

Today, in a different life, I sit at my desk job on my lunch break and contemplate the pretty weather outside. I don't have a window, but I want to see the sun, and so I've concocted a reason. I'm off to browse the office supply stores on Fifth Avenue, in search of a pack of pens. Because today I remembered that I was writer before I owned a computer, and perhaps it's time to get back to basics.