Urban Wink--With a wink of her eye, the city goes wild and the shutter snaps.

The final meager vestiges of unemployment will run out next week, and after two full years of applying for everything from paralegal jobs at international firms to washing dishes and pulling weeds, I'm still unemployed, now nearly 58 years old. I've been volunteering four days a week at the local food bank in an effort to stay connected to my community, help where I can, and keep from going crazy after the day's job search has been exhausted. The food bank squeezed enough funds from their budget to offer me twelve hours of paid admin work per week. Deeply appreciated, but not enough to cover even rent. I've lost hope in being hired by any employer, so in a last ditch effort to keep from homelessness, I'm striking out on my own.

Today, I started a web store, Urban Wink, on the online site Etsy.com. I'm digging into the photo archive I've created of urban street art (among other city things), ordered gallery mats and poly bags and have begun to sell matted photos. If I can sell ten or fifteen a week at $25 each, it will bring enough to supplement the food bank pay to help me survive. I've added a link on the right of this page for the Urban Wink Etsy store and another link to my street art set (vol. I); most of the photos I'll offer are there. They're great images that capture fleeting moments of Post Alley that will never be seen again.

Other panic-mode operations include a slew of postings offering myself as a virtual assistant, errand runner, proofreader/editor, dog walker..."anything for a buck". Desperate times, these.

Oh, and perhaps most importantly, I've found love. It's a tenuous, fragile love...one you must handle carefully--one touch of a feather, of a breath, and it could shatter into a million golden pieces.