So! for those that come here and read my driveling blog section you would know we have gone through a series of unfortunate events that led us to the point of almost homelessness until at the 11th hour we finally found a place….. only to then go deep into the hole and not be able to pay rent…. water… electricity, and that golden child of all things magical WiFi!!
We spent a week with our water shut off, that led me down the path of how fortunate we really are, and how much we take for granted…. I wont bore you anymore on that topic… at least not until the 27th when it is scheduled to be shut off again.
Still, with rent very late, and bills piling up we both (we also being my better half) are now back in the daily grind of the working life… and it sucks arse…. now while I did a stint of doing freight work from midnight to 8AM then having to work many days till 10AM or so and getting crippled in the process, that lasted for I think 2-3 months? not sure as my mind is slipping off this mortal coil these days… I can still remember commercials from the 70’s and 80’s songs like the back of my hand, but day to day life? forget it… toast… gone… lost forevermore.
After having the luxurious opportunity of going down the starving artist route with this sad belief that my writing would be found by some rich person throwing money at us like a madman on steroids thus letting us go off into the sunset to live on a farm with a mule (its a bucket list thing… I must have a mule at some point in this lifetime) chickens, cows, pigs, and a horse or two quickly vanished like a teenager with a case of beers out of a 7/11.
Reality stepped in and proceeded to beat the ever loving shit out of me until defeat was declared, and we raised the white flag. Now don’t get me wrong, we went into this with a solid plan, money saved and several books lined up (training books for Rocket Theme, Gantry, Joomla, the stuffs to help peeps build websites, and that kinda thing while also digging deep into our fiction writing) that we thought would sell well…. annnnd they didn’t.
While we both looked on surprised at the lack of reaction given so many people demanded the afore mentioned books, we realized we had to change it up, while we did that we quickly sank into the deep end of the money pit to the point that we now had no other options other than to return to that bitter world of full time employment.
While I highly recommend you do try the starving artist route, I also strongly advise that you keep an established part time job on the side, while it not only helps bring in enough income to help pay for this or that (for me that would be smokes and beers… don’t judge me, they are my only vices) they will also pay bills, or get much needed food stuffs.
Plus, when it comes to the crunch of taking the first job that comes along just to get back on top, it can…. and in most cases will bite you in the arse… it’s never the job you want, and in my case it is fucking destroying my body… so much so to the point that when I get home I either don’t want to, or can not collect my shredded brain up enough to even attempt to sit in front of my laptop, and write more than one line… God knows I tried several times.
My long over drawn (as usual) point is. If you are tempted to go down this road? do it!! just… plan for all possible failures, our own fault was so many people were demanding those particular books that we figured it would start out slow and get rolling after maybe 6 months while we still had our financial cush to rely on… instead it didn’t even leave the station… those same people just went “Eh… I’ll get to it at some point… I just wanted it to be there for when I actually need it” so we sat with our thumbs up our arses trying to regroup.
All points must be covered, and then those must have back ups… shit have back ups for your bloody back ups! we are in that process, and given the hole we are crawling out of is pretty deep, it will take time, and we shall sully forth like good rats in the maze to collect our lump of cheese at the end of each week until we can establish a solid base for our books, and we know we can step off that ledge once again without the worries of going down this same path.
As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20. Did we see where we went wrong? absolutely. Did we see where we stuck our heads in the sand? sadly yeah… did I do anything to change it? nope! I went about my daily routine ignoring the facts as they were crapped out of the sky by a friggin pterodactyl, trying to step over those giant turds in the belief things would “Just get better” we don’t want to know… or see that our actions (or lack there of) are actually blocking the possibility to keep moving forward within the realms of this new world we had created.
This was my first venture into working from home and doing nothing more than writing… it didn’t work very well, but I am now much more the wiser for my experiences, and can go forward with the understanding that shit happens, and you just can’t think… or believe that things will change if you do not make those changes.
The worst case for us was possibly facing being homeless once again, but from this I have garnished some great ideas, researched many things I would not have normally thought about, and filled several books with thoughts and angst that can probably make another two books of poetry (I wont… four books (on sale now by the way.. hint hint) of poetry from me is probably enough to stain this world) even my brother thinks it’s dark… and he’s an Atheist…
Anyway I’m babbling again as usual, so I shall stop here… and go off to rub Icy Hot into my spine in order to feel once again… it shall be a miracle of sorts if it gets me up and walking again…
On a last note… I now have once again appreciated Fridays, and have re-established my hate of Mondays…
So I shall leave you with a song by The Boomtown Rats, that should be played every damned Monday morning.
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