I have been sleeping so little. I have been driving a man to work. He responded to my intermittent rideshare ad on Craigslist. It’s been 8 days. He works nights, which means my day starts early and ends late. It’s an hour commute each way. My body’s rebelling against this harshly.

Other than the odd work shift and the smell of his Marlboros, I actually rather like the guy. We will call him Travis. Travis is of medium height and build, with large brown eyes and a wry, laid-back manner about him. He wears T-shirts with classic hiphop artists emblazoned on them— Run DMC and the Beastie Boys. In fact, he sort of reminds me of a young Ad-Rock— cheeky, dark-haired, hard partier. We spend the long drive from Warren to Saline waxing philosophical.

He has constant questions about God and Jesus. We talk about Jehovah a lot as we speed down I-94, watching the sun rise together. Stubble will cast a shadow over his face and his cigarette smoke will curl around him, shading in the lines in his forehead a bit more. I will rub my eyes and drink the coffee he buys me and play dubstep to stay awake behind the wheel.

Our partnership is odd but I enjoy him. He pays well. His family is hospitable too. On a night I was too tired to head back on the road, his mother allowed me to sleep on their couch, his housecat curled at my feet. My folks gave me grief about this earlier in the week, but it has been one of the more interesting gigs in recent memory.

I’ve also been minding petitioners. Out-of-state petitioners will collect signatures to put on state election ballots. On a day I babysit them, I’ll sit in my car for 8 hours and work on Spanish, Hindi, spiritual stuff and my novels. I received a check today and it was nice. I am there to make sure they are not forging signatures.  It is tedious, but I choose my own hours.

I’ve yet to have a real sale with insurance yet, but I wrote a policy on myself last week. I am supposed to meet up with The Blond’s mum and work on it tomorrow morning. I dunno if I’ll have the energy to do it.