Some Updates... a Spoiled Recap

 Well... let's see. Should I go all in, or just talk about the cryptic "new" post? Let's start there and see what happens...

I think I've established the whole unemployed thing? I really should write more often so I can remember what I've written. This kind of absent-mindedness should at least be accompanied by recreational merriment, and it is not... so my brain is dying, obviously.

Diligently for weeks, I apply to job after job, all things in my wheel-house of experience. And so far, the only replies I am receiving are one's for veiled sales jobs. You have a phone call with someone, and they set you up a zoom call, and upon arriving at the zoom call, you realize it's you and twenty people and the spiel begins about how blah blah blah sells itself. So, upon cessation of the severance payments, a critical choice was made. I could maybe find an entry level job and start completely over wage-wise at 48, or I could try to develop skills to start a new career that would start somewhere close to where I ended the last one, wage-wise. So, I am going for it. If I am successful, I will be a software-coder some time next year working for my new forever job. 

"Okay, what do they do?" Well, they work on the front-end and back-end of websites and write/debug the code that is used in creating them. If I am honest, this is something I've wanted to do as a career ever since "The Phantom's Bed". I should resurrect that!

"How did it go?" - I think I would say, I crawled out of Prep. It was two weeks of quick but basic lessons in JavaScript, and I got a 13/16 on the coding test, and a 23/25 on the multiple choice. That may not sound too bad, but only one error on a website can break the whole thing, or worse, expose yourself and/or visitors to risk. But I passed and I got the approval to move forward. My next session, Bootcamp starts in about 3 weeks, and this is where the coding gets bloody. I plan to spend about two weeks leading up to Bootcamp refreshing myself and trying to get a jump on the material ahead. I also need to figure out how I am going to finance this endeavor. Bootcamp is less than a $1000 - and it will be up to my instructors throughout the class and at it's end if I will move on to Immersion. It's there that the costs get real. If I make it through Bootcamp and Immersion - job placement is assured. This program is scoring 100% placement, and that's because they are weeding people out as you go along that are not benefitting from the class and material. It's specifically hard for that reason. They don't want to waste people's money, and they also can't guarantee an employer that their pupils are ready for real world challenges if you can simply buy your certification.

This is where I am. It's scary and stressful, but my wife has been incredibly patient and supportive through all of this. I am no good at this environment where things are out of my control... it's reached the point where my brain isn't simply suggesting that I am a failure but is now punching the depression button, and throwing back at me every terrible thing it's able to remember me doing or saying to anyone, ever. It's dark in here.

I think that's it for now... good night all.

Listening to: In The Nursery - Live at Melkweg, Amsterdam - February 1985

Cities Of The Dead: St. Vincent De Paul Cemetery No. 1, New Orleans

 I head across the street to visit St. Vincent De Paul No. 1

Cities Of The Dead: St. Vincent De Paul Cemetery No. 2, New Orleans

This was a brand new cemetery for me. I've been aware of it for years, but I had been warned by a co-worker that lived in the neighborhood, that it could be risky to visit. I am so glad I finally did, because the treasures that awaited me within the cemetery gates was beyond expectation. Please enjoy this glimpse at a rarely visited, but lovely cemetery in the Upper Ninth Ward.

 

Soapboxing on YouTube

In response to a comment on one of my cemetery videos, my reply turned into a soap-boxing rant on gentrification. I still need it written down, but I'm sure my commenter doesn't want to hear my rant, when I'm only 8 years into my NOLA residency.

Thank you for commenting and visiting! I did not realize that was where the Magnolia Projects stood, I knew it was previously 'something' since all of the homes are newer, and I assumed it was likely many of the community housing blocks I remembered when I visited New Orleans in 2002. I recall a news report on some national nightly news that reported from Magnolia when it had been deemed "the murder capital of the country".  I agree, the neighborhood does seem healed in a way. I find a sad irony that most of the community housing buildings that were all over the city, were some of the only structures to survive Katrina, and the debate that ensued afterward about the direction the city should take in replacing those structures. It was easy with so many residents displaced to other cities and states to assume many would not return. While I think this area, and others have healed as you eloquently phrased it, after "40+ years of beatdown", I believe many families were no longer welcome because of the city's strict policy on who could live there. My understanding, and correct me if I am mistaken, is that a family had to decide to either kick out the troubled family member or the one with the record to live in these new communities, or they had to migrate like so many, out to The East to live together. I don't know what's right or wrong; a tormented community deserves to heal, it deserves to live in quality housing that makes one feel safe and proud - but I worry about the policy decisions in New Orleans that are gentrifying all of these historic and historically African-American neighborhoods and pricing them out (with property taxes alone) of homes and neighborhoods they have lived in for generations, forcing them further and further out of the city proper. I sort of want the "projects" buildings on Earhart to stand as a reminder, not for Katrina, but to tell the story of a New Orleans, a city that is predominantly African American, that despite a white-minority, took a "big city" approach of desegregating the population and giving people few options but to live in crime-infested, poorly-managed projects while paying starvation wages (still do). If you were lucky enough to own or rent a home, Katrina provided the corrupt power of New Orleans the moment to change the demographics of this city. When I film cemeteries like St. Joseph, I think about what that neighborhood might have felt like in 1900, and I wonder, were people feeling the weight of world in the same way as the people living there now. The tourists coming to New Orleans pay $30 to hear ghost stories, maybe tour a cemetery looking for a fright... when in truth, the scariest stories are on every block, every street, every home. I have never lived in a city that has so much pain... so much oppression; and I have never lived in a city with such beautiful and resilient people.