Hustling is hard work.

Every day I try to make progress with my various missions. I try to contact people, follow up leads, write and do tiny things to advance my cause. But it's tough work. Mainly because I've heard some mildly sickening news - that this year's quota of H1B visas has run out. So behind every valiant gesture towards finding work is the damning thought that I'm dead on arrival. There may be other options - the O1 visa, the L1 intercompany visa, even the student visa if it comes to that. But each one has its mountain of conditions and restrictions and difficulties. Walking the New York streets as an unemployed outsider hoping to get in, is a decidedly different sensation to the delirious elation one feels as a tourist - playing at being a high roller, staying at the coolest hotel, eating at fabulous restaurants and shopping like you have Donald Trump's credit card. Today I saw Reese Witherspoon smiling from a magazine cover (was it VOGUE?), and viewed her as some vagabond might see a family sitting in a cosy living room; she was on the other side, in some smug, happy, secure and employed paradise that I didn't have the key to. This city makes you want to be someone, and when you're no one you feel it profoundly.