Today the weather is wetter and colder than it should be but things are moving along!

This morning we read a post from a man who moved to our city two days ago and said he regrets it already. There had been abundance, sunshine and friendliness in the place he had been before. Poor guy! We said. Soon he'll get used to eating supermarket sandwiches under doorways to keep the bread from getting soaked with rain.

Joking, joking, joking!

We are not looking at things so bleakly anymore.

These days we are waking with the dawn, washing with natural soap and wearing sweaters and shoes purchased in France. We are attempting to undergo a full body/mind transformation. To keep us from lapsing back into the old habit of sleeping all day, we have decided not hang curtains or blinds. Whatever happens in the top half of our bedroom is fully open for our neighbors to see. When laying flat on our bed, we are just a few inches below visibility. In the mornings, we avoid exposing our bodies by sliding down and getting dressed on the floor.

For now, we have promised ourselves there will be no more freakouts about how empty and cruel life here can feel. No more looking at life as a painful and stupid mechanism of unending consumption. No more describing it as a numbing gorgefest constructed of feeding troughs for asinine pigs. No more leaving comments that say we are living in the Kali Yuga, a dark age of upscale food courts and 'purpose-led' branding. No more believing the only reasonable response is a seething antipathy toward everything.

We are taking a more cheery disposition.

We are becoming people who speak about life as if it were something to give a damn about. We are going to the gym and lifting heavier and heavier weights. We are going to a specialty store for vegetables and snacking on cashew nuts. We are reading a 1,500 page New Age book that teaches us how to pursue miracles. The first thing we have to do, says the book, is accept that none of this is real.

Also, we are hunting for jobs.

Just this week we were invited to interview for a position at a company that sells luxury dog food. Every batch, says the website, is prepared and tasted by human chefs. We watched a video of happy dogs in large houses scarfing down bowls of top quality wet, chunky and beige. The first step in the interview process was to record a minute-long video and show off our personality. The second was to meet with the company’s AI recruiter to assess our attitude and expertise. After that came a written task that would take seven days. Only then would we meet members of “the squad”.

By now it is clear to all of us that we are living in an age where life is little more than a series of humiliation rituals designed to weed out those still dumb enough to believe in dignity. So it didn't bother us that every email the dog food company sent greeted us by saying Woof.

We like to think we are good and kind people who have listened to enough podcasts to know the right way to act. But, we can, at times, be sneering and pretentious. We do have our flaws. We found it hard to say ‘job at a dog food company' without cracking up.

We have returned to this city because of circumstances outside of our control, but we are doing what we can. We have talked our way into renting an apartment in a beautiful neighbourhood with no signs of decay. To satisfy the landlord, we were asked to install apps that let them see into our bank accounts. From here, we will continue our search for a place to stand permanently - not for money or fame or glory, but out of a our simple hope that, somewhere, firm ground still exists.

This week, we read that electricity costs more here than in any other country in the world. We also read that the bosses of our water company received nine million in bonus money even though there is more raw sewage in our water than ever before. This place is a bucket of greedy crabs, but we will not let ourselves feel embattled, persecuted or beleaguered. We are staying cheery and training our brains to look on the bright set. We watched twenty minutes of a documentary that idealised living conditions in other countries and forced ourselves to reject it outright.

We are pursuing miracles as a device for perception-correction. Only creations of light will be real, everything else will be considered part of the nightmare and not allowed to exist.

In this mode, we will be able to see time as an illusion and use it constructively to get jobs where we are not asked to woof like dogs. We will plan a life for ourselves far away from this place, and bank sufficient funds to get set up. We will read books, take walks, and see our friends. Then, when our lease is up, we will go.

"A miracle is a correction factor introduced into false thinking. It acts as a catalyst, shaking up erroneous perception and reorganizing it properly. This places you under the atonement principle, where perception is healed. Until this has occurred, revelation of the divine order is impossible."

Right now, we are learning to perceive our surroundings fully instead of only selectively to see if that helps.