Our lease is up. The boys have moved out of the Hollywood apartment and have settled into their new pad across town. I, too, have packed up and shipped out, also to the boys’ new place, though my things are still packed up and stashed in a corner, awaiting a final destination, and I am crashing on their couch.

I have spent the past weeks in various degrees of self-loathing and self-pity. I have no home, a car that barely works, a job that doesn’t pay and is rotting my brain, and no plan or dream for the future. I am paralyzed by indecision. This is unfortunate and upsetting. On the other hand, I have a job, friends to stay with, means to fix my car, and, not to get too cliché, but let’s go there, my life and that of my friends and family intact. I’ve been playing the relativity game this week, flashing back from a browser opened to pictures of the newly homeless in mass shelters to one listing apartments that I can’t afford.

I am taking myself too seriously, and I don’t know how to get out of my funk—I feel like I need to do something for someone—volunteer in a hospital or tutor kids or work in a shelter, something that isn’t about me. But then I pause, and try to figure out what I’d like to do, who I’d like to help, and it’s a whole new existential crisis. It’s cumbersome, and I’m over it. A few days ago, I was up and ready to head to the Gulf States to help out—though with no skills specific to healing bodies, repairing shattered lives, or rebuilding devastated towns, the extra mouth to feed most certainly wouldn’t be worth it for the agencies helping out. So here, I suppose, is a manifesto for myself, published here so that I might not forget about it in the morning. I am going to make some changes. I am going to find a place to stay, even if just temporarily to get me off the boys’ couch. I am going to chill out. And, I am going to start keeping a proper blog.

In our first issue: gather knowledge and give out money. The Washington Post ran a really upsetting but insightful article-- "A Nation's Castaways"—analyzing the class and race issues that are perpetuating the devastation from the hurricane. Check it out. And Amazon makes it easy to donate to the Red Cross’s Hurricane Relief Efforts. I’m donating the bounty from giving up my $4 a day coffee habit.