Bloomingdale's

I started work at Bloomingdale's last Monday. I showed up an hour early feeling grey, I think because of the weather. That's what I chose to blame, at least. I think I can maybe explain the feeling a little better now because I have distanced myself from it and perhaps have a little perspective to diffuse the angst.

I think the best way to describe the way a felt was like this: It felt like the constant, infinite shuffling of men and women and children was this pixelated portrait from the earliest photographers. We were all black and white. We were working slowly to build a railroad or maybe we were standing outside of a pub for some reason. We were all wearing bowler hats and growing out mustaches and we were all grey and black. It became hard to distinguish myself from others around me and it because hard to distinguish myself from the speckled floors and it became hard to distinguish myself from the hipsters in Urban Outfitters and the soccer moms with strollers in J. Jill.

They are going to start screening kids for depression.

I can't watch the news like I did today. It makes me feel like never getting out of bed.

In the mall, we all started looking the same and it started to actually hurt. I couldn't leave. I wandered in and out of every shoe store in the mall, and I couldn't find a single one that didn't make me feel horrible. Aldo, depressing. Stacato, horrible. I can't even start on DSW. I even went to shoe sections in different department stores.

Watching the scramble to find the right shoes when no one really allowed in malls even needs shoes. You have to have shoes to enter, so going to a mall to find shoes sounded more and more absurd, like sitting in a grounded canoe and fishing into the grass.

I'm tired.