Regardless of what my uncle says about the recession just being “media hype” we have been hit. Hard. My better half lost her job about a month ago and we’ve been scrambling to assemble a plan to vacate our absurdly overpriced Manhattan apartment and get her a new job asap. The move we planned after the holidays will be happening a lot sooner than we expected. Like, now. We’ve been driving brokers crazy in Brooklyn and thought we might just get lucky with this one place we liked. No luck. Found out that after dicking us around for two weeks the landlord didn’t want to rent to us after all. All this and taking care of an eight month old.

A bit of good news is we did [I think we saw something like 25 apartments in three days] secure a place in Brooklyn. I couldn’t believe how difficult that was. The last apartment I had on my own in Brooklyn I handed my landlord Dante an envelope with first and last month’s rent in cash to secure myself a lower monthly rent. Done deal. We jumped through hoops on this place. Yeah, the economy is non-existent.

This Sisyphusian journey has been hard on us and hard on the work. That new outline I started has taken a backseat until things get settled. I’ll work on it whenever I can but it’s hard to concentrate when you don’t know where your underwear are so I’ll just have to steal moments here and there in between the chaos. Imagine what it would be like if I had a producer breathing down my neck? Thank god I don’t have to deal with that kind of pressure. Who needs that?

I have to add one thing. It’s times like this that you really find out the character of the person you are with. If I was with a petty, small person this would be tough. No, actually, it would be impossible. The daily demands are too great when you bring a child into the mix. I’m not saying we don’t have our days. I’m just saying that our worst days are no where near what they could be if we weren’t on the same page. Much love baby.

So I’ll leave you with this saying I heard from the first broker we met while he was showing us an apartment we passed on. He got this from his father, a jeweler, who I’m sure saw both great times and tough times;

When times are good live like your broke so when times are bad you can live normal.

More to come.

Still from the upcoming Revolutionary Road based on the classic Richard Yates novel.

Novelist and screenwriter Richard Price remembers Yates as an inspirational writer.