Starting New

We arrived in Portland, Oregon a few days ago, trying to find a new place to live. Why Portland? I'd say its more hearsay than anything we had actually confirmed. The rumors are its cheaper, easier to get a job, better wages, better public transit... but thats not hard to find when you're coming from Los Angeles. Not to mention we took the very responsible route of not making any preparations whatsoever for when we got here, primarily because we only decided to actually come up less than 2 weeks ago. Actually, I guess that wouldn't be exactly accurate... we had talked about it for a while, but none of us really accepted it until we had gotten all our loose ends tied up and actually got in the car.
I've kinda fallen in love with the place though. Beyond the crazy art around the city, from murals of abstract art to walls in the city center emblazoned with 'KEEP PORTLAND WEIRD', the people are just decent.  Its not hard to strike up a chat, and going out is cheap: PBRs are usually about 2 bucks a piece and craft  (which I can't get enough of) is about 3 dollars by the pint. Not to mention that, for the first time in my entire life, I walked into a bar and actually knew nearly every song they played. Not a single chart... which is kinda ridiculous. And that was only the first bar we walked into. This place only got better between specialized brunch restaurants, tea shops with over 100 different varieties of tea, barcades with Rockband karaoke, a downtown with more food cars than some town fairs - kind of its own world. One that I reckon suits me pretty well for the time being. They do call it the city where the young go to retire for a reason.

The city itself is beautiful as well. Even the more industrial parts of the city are more appealing than alot of places, with old brick buildings with still active production going on. And I've never seen quite a collection of bridges. From old industrial to new multidecker freeway bridges, for some reason they're interesting to look at... and makes walking around the city make you feel much further away from home than you really are, and happier for seeing something new.

It was an arduous task trying to find a place to stay, and it wasn't nearly as cheap as we thought it would be for a temporary place. A month in a shared flat may have been 300 bucks a month, but 2 weeks in a temporary room eventually ran us about $350 a week. But whatever, necessary expenses. When you're put in a tight spot, it's funny the things you'll put up with. We're currently staying in a shady little.... well it's not quite a hotel or a motel, but it's certainly our own very special space. The kind of special where you find needle caps underneath the bed, and you get that sinking feeling in your stomach when you realize why they had the no refund clause on the contract you just signed. So yeah.
 Rather than spend too much time in our cozy little den, we've managed to occupy a local cafe during our latent hours. When we found the place, we figured the fact that it has wifi is good enough for us, but then we realised this place is a whole new level of amazing. Firstly, its good enough when you can goto a coffee shop in the morning and get a cup of decent coffee for a decent price, but what if you can buy a pint of beer for less than or equal to the same price? Golden. So now the hunt begins for a semi-permanent place. And a real job. Goddamnit.

I've been trying to score jobs doing freelance writing on certain websites, but job adverts for this are uninspiring at the best, and the perks of the 'work for yourself!' route seem to be getting quite unclear. The selection seems to be either writing something you like for nothing, writing something you could care less about for chump change, or not being qualified to get both the good parts of that deal. Gotta stick to it though - seems the whole making a career deal consists of a phase of doing a bunch of stuff you don't really want to just so you have the chance to get a job you do want. And while I do like the occasional hand of 3 card poker, thats a sorta awkward gamble to come to terms with. Turning my nose up at jobs won't get me anywhere though... and coffee will bankrupt me soon enough at this rate.