Definitions

Dear reader, 

        Commute was chosen very carefully as the title for this first issue of Day Job Journal. Obviously the wordplay was too good to pass up but it also illustrates the reason I started this journal. I am a frontline worker. I have been at work since day one of this pandemic dealing with the public face to face. By some miracle my family and friends have remained safe and healthy and, for a time, I was quite productive in my writing. After two years however I am exhausted and in need of transformation. 

        Day Job Journal was born from a desperate need to share in our creativity and our realities. Being a writer is not profitable or glamorous nor are writers melancholy layabouts. We work. We work hard. We work when we have no energy. We find a journal or a scrap piece of paper after we emerge from our work uniform cocoons. We make stops at the keyboard between loads of laundry. We survive each emergency and they stay at the tip of our pens forever. We are deserving of celebration! 

        This journal is mutable. I am excited to see how it grows and changes. It’s mission statement could change. Its desires, my desires as the editor will change, I have changed as I’ve experienced these poems and art. I hope they will change you too. 

Kindly,

Alex Vigue

Founding Editor