I start too high today. 1. I almost forget to take the sign with me. 2. It takes me half an avenue to realize I'm singing in an unsustainable key, breathless and whispery and warbly. I should have tuned up and found my pitch in the elevator, like I usually do, but after going away for a week, I forget how this thing is supposed to work.

Warm weather means people stop to talk longer. A lot longer. After two days of sunshine, I can already see that I have to rethink my approach to this action, or I will lose hours of my life talking to people who think my sign says, "Tell me your life story."

Three 60ish women sitting in the courtyard of a NYCHA house. I just came from my shrink, so the sign's in Safe Mode and I'm humming instead of singing. One of them calls out, "Let me see your sign!" I stop and present it, they approve.

Friends, I am extremely grateful for you, and for the support I'm getting in the comments. You are saying lovely things to/about me, and I want to try to live up to those things, insofar as I can. But I also don't want to kid anybody.

With all the rain lately, I haven't been able to channel my upset and anxiety into singing and talking to people, and it is not good.

I have not yet felt endangered while walking with the sign -- or, since I'm a woman, no more endangered than usual. People disagree with me, usually in passing, muttering as they walk by:

14th and 6th, waiting for the light to change. Scruffy, lanky white guy in his forties scoffs at my sign: "Like Hilary didn't lie? Please."

People have stopped crying when we talk. I think mid-month might have been the last one: a guy in his twenties, longish red hair, polar fleece hat. I was leaning against the door on the downtown 2/3, he was holding the bar above the guy sitting to my left.

There are two cities in New York City: Have City and Ass Busting Town. I’m from Have City, where the women walk around in yoga pants all day and the men “pull down” big incomes. But every day I walk through Ass Busting Town.

This sign-carrying has all been a selfish act. An attempt to turn my depression and hopelessness into anger and action.