Pilcrow

It's called In the End, It'll All Work Out Okay.

So far I seem to be ahead. But sometimes it's hard to tell.

No particular crisis spurring this post—actually today (meaning yesterday, Wednesday) was pretty good, with a very good first night of Decibel Festival 2013. It's just a stray thought, prompted perhaps by reading about another friend's recent troubles with anxiety and depression. But yeah. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

Ugh. This month so far has been nearly overwhelming, with so much going on. Musically, I had Decibel Festival over the first weekend, and I've now got the City Arts Fest coming up this week. Health-wise, I came down with a cold after Decibel Festival, which knocked me down for a couple days; but this past week I've been riding my bike every day to KEXP for work. Volunteer-wise, I had the KEXP Fall Membership Drive. Work-wise, today I just finished up my week of full-time work at KEXP auditing the data entry for the membership drive; that meant a sudden big shift in my schedule as I had to get up a couple hours earlier than usual in order to be there during normal business hours. I also had a few bigger projects overlapping that week to do as well, so I've been running short on sleep and feeling pretty tired. I'm still working now on finishing a paper for tomorrow, I've got another project belatedly kicking off tomorrow, and another project that's turned into a bigger commitment.

All that work is good, because my finances collapsed on me at the start of the month—I basically had no work for six weeks in July and August, so I wasn't able to pay my credit cards or mortgage in September, so my credit cards have been cut off and my mortgage lender is threatening foreclosure. The mortgage situation is actually the less serious one, in that I'm already applying for an adjustment under the federal "Home Affordable Mortgage Program" (HAMP), so I can put off the foreclosure threat for a little while and hopefully avoid it entirely with some combination of an adjustment and increasing work/income. The credit card situation is more serious in that I've been relying on the two cards to cover my regular living expenses like food and transportation, and clearly I can't do that any longer. I'm getting some help from friends, it looks like I've got more work coming in for the next few months, I'm going to get by. Getting work is still the primary issue; I've known that I really haven't been making a living, I've just been staving off collapse, and I finally let it slip too far. I think I'm finally going to see more work coming in regularly, but I do still need to find more sources as well, or investigate returning to part-time or full-time employment. 

Negotiations for a settlement on last year's car crash are continuing. I think that's all I can or should say about that. But, that is something else to remark upon: a year ago tonight, at this time, I was in the hospital having narrowly avoided death or major bodily harm in the car crash. For all that this month's been nearly overwhelming, I'm still here, alive, to face it and live through it.

I was going to post relatively early yesterday, while having dinner before going to trivia night, but I just couldn't think of anything I wanted to write. I was in a grumpy mood all day anyhow, after letting Monday and most of Tuesday pass without doing anything productive, and then having some work unexpectedly show up, meaning once again that I'd let free time slip by without taking advantage of it to accomplish some personal tasks and now I would be too busy to deal with those tasks. After trivia I was still in a grumpy mood; I went down to Bauhaus to try to get some work done and also write my journal post, but although I did accomplish a quick and easy work task, I wasn't able to concentrate to write in my journal and decided to just give up and head home.

Attempting to head home is when the minor transit trouble came up. I have an ORCA transit card with an online account tied to one of my credit cards. I set it up with a nominal balance of $20 in the ORCA account, and it's supposed to automatically charge my credit card another $20 every time the online account runs out. This should happen right on the bus whenever I tap the reader and my balance needs refreshing. Once again, for the third or fourth time in as many months, when I tapped my ORCA transit card as I got on the bus, instead of refreshing my account, it simply deducted the remaining funds (only $0.25 left at the time) and told me I still owed the remaining $2 for the ride. I've been finding this infuriating and incomprehensible; why did it keep letting my balance run out and not auto-charge my card to refresh it as needed? It was particularly infuriating because when this has happened, it's taken at least a full two days for my account to refresh again. So I'd be stuck having to make sure I had dollar bills and quarters on hand so that I could use the bus, without any good idea of how long it would be until my card would work again.

Today though I looked for some answers on the ORCA website, before calling them to complain at great length. And rather to my surprise, I did find the answer. I don't know what the reasoning is behind this, but the system is set up so that it cannot autoload an account more than five times a month. It hadn't occurred to me that I'd been using the bus so much more frequently since the car crash, but sure enough it made sense and explained why I'd only been having this trouble in the past several months. I'm fairly sure that the autoload function has been failing after four uses in a month, not five, but still that is the likeliest explanation.

Fortunately the solution is fairly simple as well; I just changed the autoload value to a higher amount so that it would have to refresh less often. Now I am curious to compare my transportation expenses before and after the accident and see whether using the bus all the time is less expensive. I know I was only fueling my car about once a month, but then there were also expenses such as insurance, parking, and maintenance. My transportation costs so far post-accident have been bus fares and taxi fares (so far I've used a taxi I believe only twice in six months, and one of those times I would've taken the bus if I'd been by myself), though there's also the nebulous cost in extra time spent on slow and roundabout bus routes instead of driving directly. Even if I'm spending less overall on transportation, I know there will be times that having access to a personal vehicle will be useful or even necessary. No decisions yet on how I'm going to handle that, long-term.

Overall this has been a fairly blah week, all through my own doing—or not doing, as the case may be. Well, there've been good things and bad things.

On the good side, I did finally complete making the 2010 V CD, and got my three copies sent out to the recipients. That was something I agreed to do last May, and I did have an extension at the time because I knew I'd be too busy through June to work on it, but of course I really should've completed it months ago. Still, it's done, I'm fairly pleased with it, and completing it means I get to take it off The List. Also this week I went to see Foals play at the Showbox. The opening bands were both pretty good. Because their new album is moodier and less energetic, Foals' set wasn't as exciting as I'd expected until the last few songs (including the encore), but they definitely delivered with those last songs. 

On the bad side, I just haven't been getting out of bed and getting stuff done. Monday I made sure to get out of the house early in the afternoon to run errands, including getting the CDs in the mail, but then when I got home I didn't get anything useful done before the show. Tuesday and Wednesday, I didn't get anything done—I did get to KEXP Wednesday afternoon for my intern work and was productive there, so good, but I could've got other important things done before then. Today, I did my taxes, so that's on the side of being productive and is good. But, I meant to get that done at the start of the week, and the reason I kept putting it off and consequently got nothing done is because I knew it was going to be bad for me. Sure enough, I owe several thousand dollars that I don't have. I don't have it because I earned just enough to keep my mortgage, condo dues, and utilities paid (and even then, not without some help), with the majority of my daily living expenses—food and transportation—adding to credit card debt. And although the bad economy is partly responsible for my situation, I still have to take most of the responsibility for my lack of effort in finding more work.

It's a lousy situation, and I have to do something to change it, as evidenced by the items that have been at the top of The List since I started keeping it back in July. And the evidence that I can do something to change it is stacked against me. If I know I have the capability to make the efforts to find more work, but keep choosing not to make that effort, do I really have the capability? I believe that's a lame excuse. But somehow I find it hard to do.

I began my previous post stating that my burst of anxiety about my precarious home mortgage situation was sudden and caused by no particular reason. Somewhat later in the evening, as I was telling a friend about it, I remembered that I had good news too, about having a new client for my freelance work—in fact, they'd already contacted me on Friday evening, just after normal work hours, to ask whether I could possibly do a short rush job this weekend, which I did this (Saturday) afternoon. So it occurred to me, perhaps what caused the sudden burst of anxiety was the very fact that I did now have confirmation that I had a new source of work.

This is not to say that my anxiety is just some perverse reaction to a positive change; my situation is indeed dire and I should've faced it with enough will to do something about it much sooner. I'm just wondering whether it's that improvement in one part of my situation that threw the other problem into sudden sharp relief.

Also of note, although anxiety is certainly the appropriate term for my sudden concern and fear, I did not actually suffer an anxiety/panic attack. Actually, what may be more of a problem is how fatalistic I felt, instead, thinking well crap, I'm screwed. It's going to be that much harder to find a solution if I already believe there's nothing I can do about the problem. But when the root of my problem is that I've lacked reliable sufficient income to keep making ends meet, and that with my current work situation I have no way of knowing even month-to-month whether I will be earning enough, I don't see how I'm going to convince another lender that I'm a viable investment.

Humph. I suppose I'll just have my anxiety attack in a little bit, when I try to go to bed.

Edit to add: I forgot to include another thought I had earlier this evening, which is that the truth is, I've been living beyond my means ever since buying the condo. The hope and expectation was that my means would expand, but the fact is that my means seriously contracted along with the rest of the economy.

I was contacted by an agent from a local staffing agency today. I've never done work for this agency before, but I have had my resume in their system for over a year and was talking to them a bit last summer about getting work. I didn't remain persistent with them partly because I picked up a page-layout project that filled up my time for a while, but mostly because I let myself be discouraged by the general lack of available work. Well, it seems that things are finally picking up, as the agent saw my resume in their system and contacted me to ask whether I'd be interested in being contacted regularly as positions come available.

The short answer is of course simply yes. Probably my biggest flaw as a freelancer is my strong aversion to searching for work; I've always hated searching for full-time work, and now that I'm self-employed, I still hate trying to find new contacts and potential sources of projects. I'm happy to make new contacts and connections, I certainly don't shy away when opportunities present themselves, I just don't want to spend time cold-calling companies and dislike approaching potential new contacts even if we share a connection through someone else, unless that connection facilitates the introduction. Consequently, it's obvious that I should be working with an agency or agencies: let them do what they're good at, which is connecting available workers to available work, and let me do what I'm good at, which is doing the work. Even though most agencies treat their contractors as employees, meaning a lower pay rate than what I can demand on my own, they also provide employee benefits and more importantly in my case they provide the work that I don't want to find on my own, so it's clearly to my advantage.

The longer answer is more complex, though. In the past eight years, almost all of my work both as an employee and as a freelancer has been for Microsoft. That definitely gives me a strong skill set and valuable experience for continuing to work with Microsoft. However, my understanding is that most of the Microsoft contract work the agencies offer would require working full-time on campus. Having spent most of my work time from March into June commuting daily to Redmond for a 3Sharp project, I've been reminded how much I dislike the daily commute to the Eastside: it's very tiring and draining, it's expensive, and there are better things I could be doing with my time than spending a minimum 90 minutes of my day in that commute. (Yes I know plenty of people spend at least that much time commuting one-way and are grateful to have the work; that doesn't change the fact that it's a poor way to spend time.) 

Furthermore, I have been getting work as a subcontractor. On the one hand, it really hasn't been sufficient to my needs, which is why I desperately need new sources. On the other hand, I can expect my current project flow to be higher in the next several months, and I've had the good fortune of gaining a new source recently, which should also help improve my situation. Unfortunately I really can't tell how much my workload is going to increase, so I have no way to know whether it will be adequate. What I do know, though, from having a full-time project this past spring, is that it's pretty difficult to be working regular full-time hours, plus commuting to the Eastside, and also to keep doing freelance work on the side, of the kind I've been doing. I just wouldn't have enough time to get the freelance work done in a timely fashion, and I also wouldn't have energy for it.

So, ideally what I'd like is to be able to get more project-based work of the kind I'm already doing—here's a document or set of documents, please edit these, done—rather than committing to some kind of long-term full-time contract with one employer, working on site, particularly if that means having to commute to the Eastside again. However, there's a strong argument to be made that I should take what I can get, because the economy's not all that improved and because I've put myself in a real financial bind in the past couple years; I really need reliable regular income at a level considerably above what I've been making. The question remains whether I can get what I need by doing what I want. (And the answer depends in part on the financial analysis I still have to do.)

I mentioned back at the beginning of March that I was still struggling with the same internal and external problems that had in part prompted my 40 Topics / Days / Years series. As you might expect, that in part accounts for the continued lack of posting here. However, on the first of March I also started working on contract with my previous employer, 3Sharp, for a couple of projects. The projects required me to go to their office in Redmond and work nearly full-time hours; although there was some downtime in the middle, they kept me busy right up into the middle of June. Additionally, I continued to do some of my usual freelance editing on the side, nights and weekends. Back to the unaccustomed full days of work plus commuting time—not to mention getting up earlier than usual each day—I found myself pretty tired before the end of each week.

Then, Memorial Day Weekend kicked off my busiest month in a long long time: first with spending that weekend at the Sasquatch Music Festival, once again as a media correspondent for KEXP, and then with finalizing preparations for Go Play NW 2010, in addition to working first at 3Sharp and then switching over to a week's contract at KEXP right before Go Play NW. Doug arrived late Thursday night right before Go Play NW, and then stayed for a week's visit afterward, during which I also had my last full day on the KEXP contract and then spent more than full-time hours in the next two days editing a long paper for my usual freelance source.

All this is to say, I've been really busy for the past four months, busier than I have been any time in the past three years since becoming a freelancer. That was much needed, too, as my financial resources had all but run out; all this work has given me a slight reprieve, though I still need to quickly find more work before I'm broke again.

However, despite the still razor-thin margin I have, and because of being so busy for the past four months, I've just had a week of Saturdays. After seeing Doug off last Saturday, going out to a party, and then dancing until dawn at an after-hours club, I've been staying up until about 3 am each night, staying in bed until 11 or noon, and doing very little during the day. Even today, even after making my list last night of all the things I have to do, I still got up very late and did nothing more productive today than mix a batch of ice cream for Sunday's Independence Day / Tony's citizenship celebration party. I think that's okay for me to take a week of mostly lazing; certainly it won't help me to berate myself about it. But I also see the poisonous side of it, the weight of inertia, apathy, and depression lurking in there. I need to turn away from that and find some momentum to get moving on things, again.

In 2004, I started thinking it was about time to look into buying a condo for myself, and I put that down as a goal for 2005. However, in late 2004 I also got braces for the second time in my life, to prepare for the bone graft I’d need in order to get permanent false teeth to fill in a couple gaps in my upper teeth. As I recall, shortly before getting braces, I was pretty much debt-free, besides maybe a few hundred dollars outstanding on my credit cards. In fact my finances were good enough that I decided to pay for my braces up front using a credit card, because I got a small discount for doing so, rather than paying in installments. I was confident that I would be able to clear that credit card debt within six months. But I also had some car repairs that fall, and I decided not to go home for Christmas that year specifically because of the expense of braces. So, I also expected that I would not actually attempt to buy a condo in 2005, just that I would make an effort to learn about home-buying so I’d be prepared when I had the financial resources available again.

In March 2005, I ran into some major car repairs, as first my radiator failed and then another engine part failed, costing me somewhere around $3,000. Between this unexpected expense and the braces I was still paying for, it was clear it would be a while before I could save up any money for a down payment on a condo. I also did an analysis of my finances, to see how I was spending my money and where I might be able to reduce expenses, but it didn’t look good. My biggest expenses were rent and my car (gas and maintenance), and although my rent expense would go toward a mortgage instead, it looked like the rest of my disposable income that was currently going toward my credit card debt would also be taken up by a mortgage.

But then at the end of April, I got news that pushed me to start learning about home-buying in earnest. My landlord told me that he had plans to renovate a couple of the apartments and that once he’d done so, he wanted to move into the apartment I was currently renting. So I went to a seminar for first-time home buyers, got a loan pre-approval, and got an agent. Over the next few months I looked at several places, and discovered that condos in my practical price range were all smaller and more expensive than my current apartment.

One thing I learned was that there’s a difference between what banks thought I could afford and what I thought. I might’ve expected the banks to be more conservative, but at least at that time the pre-approval process considered only gross income and outstanding debt—loans and credit cards—which resulted in a higher figure for monthly payments than I thought I could manage after taking into consideration my everyday living expenses. Condos of a size close to my apartment were at the top of my pre-approved loan range but seemed too expensive in monthly payments for my finances, and even condos that were just a little smaller and also much further out from the center of Seattle were still too pricey. However, I didn’t want to abandon my search, because I was still faced with losing my apartment within a few months and I figured the rent at a new apartment would be high enough that I might as well be paying a mortgage on my own place instead.

I made a couple offers on places that were smaller and further out than I wanted, but otherwise seemed nice enough. I was outbid for those. My search had a temporary lull in August as only one suitable place was on the market, and I didn’t like it. And then in early September my agent brought me to a place in north Queen Anne, quite close to the Fremont Bridge, which had recently dropped in price. It was roomy, fairly close to the size of my apartment, and I liked the feel of it. It was still expensive, at the top of my price range and high in monthly payments, but the seller’s agent was willing to work with me to drop the asking price a bit and roll in the closing costs instead, and my agent convinced me it would be worth the stretch in my finances. And so I became a homeowner.

Overall, I’ve been happy since then to have my own place. It’s still a comfortable size for me and I still like the location, within a short walk of Fremont and longer walks to Ballard or downtown, and also close to several bus routes downtown. However, I’ve been having doubts about my decision this year. The economic downturn has meant a serious lack of work for me, making it difficult to meet my mortgage and condo association payments each month; when I talked to my bank about assistance, they basically said that without regular income the best they can do is help me sell my place before I’m faced with foreclosure. Additionally, this past year my condo association has discovered that the buildings have a serious water intrusion problem and we will need to replace the outer walls, a very expensive process. Combined with my financial difficulties, I’m in serious danger of losing my home. On the other hand, the association might be able to cover the repairs, or a substantial portion of the cost, through insurance. And as I don’t have any good options if I lose my place, I’ll just have to find more work of some kind. I’ve already put effort, time, and money into being a homeowner and I like my home; it’s worth further effort to keep it.

• Professional
1. Leave my current job.
2. Earn a good living as a freelance editor.
3. Add page layout/desktop publishing to my portfolio and career.

The "professional" category was conspicuously absent from my initial goals for 2007 post. My 2006 goal had been to "earn a serious raise at work," but I had another goal, or rather task, that I knew I had to do during 2006: decide whether I really wanted to continue working there at all. I had taken on the office manager role partly because I really needed the raise it brought, and partly because I wanted to help out more at work. I spent most of the year growing unhappy with work but of course not really thinking about it and more importantly not really doing anything about it. But in November I had a meeting with my manager about the new formalized review process and my goals for the next few months, and that woke me up. I realized that I didn't want to have anything to do with that, and finally admitted to myself that they didn't need a full-time editor and I didn't want to stay anymore or do other work for them.

That realization was the foundation for my claim that this is the Year of Change. After all, there are few things I fear and loathe more in the world than searching for employment, but I knew it had to be done and done soon. Furthermore, I decided that I didn't want to just switch to some other company; if I wanted to be a professional editor, I figured I would have to make that happen myself, as a freelance contractor. These were huge changes for me to contemplate; anyone who's known me for a long time might even say the idea that I'd do it was preposterous. Nevertheless, I'd reached a point where that was clearly my best path, and, oddly, I actually felt good about it, not anxious and full of dread.

So, I started talking to Tony about independent contractor work, and started seriously thinking about when and how to take steps. I also did have feelers out about the possibility of moving to a different company rather than going freelance, and I did let that delay me from taking more direct action at first. However, at the beginning of February the question of my long-term professional goals was raised at work, and that made me decide I had to start moving. I had Tony put me in touch with someone he'd been working with, and I planned to tell work at the beginning of March that I would be leaving at the end of that month.

...and on the last day of February, work told me I was being laid off, effective that day.

Although it was a small shock and caught me off guard, it shouldn't have - it was easily just as clear to them that I was unhappy and that they didn't need a full-time editor as it was to me. And although they thought they were surprising me and were concerned how it would go, I turned it around by saying, "actually, you're trumping me...", and it was a very cordial meeting as we all knew it was the right thing and the right time. Work has been very helpful and generous - I'm not quite sure how discrete I need to be, so I'll just say that it worked out better than if I'd stayed through March and quit as I'd intended. So, professional goal number 1 has been completed successfully.

Furthermore, goal number 2 is under way. One reason I haven't written about all this sooner is that I've been adjusting to my new situation, but another is that I've already been pretty busy with freelance work through that connection of Tony's. So things have been going very well so far. I still need to block out time to do more cleanup work on my resume, and I need to make some other contacts for potential work, but things look okay for the immediate future.

One nice side effect of this change is that I've finally purchased a laptop, a 15" MacBook Pro, because I need a good machine to do freelance work, something that I can also run Windows on (using Parallels, which rocks). I've been talking for a few years now about getting a laptop as my primary computer and using one of my desktop Macs as an entertainment server; unexpectedly, that plan's finally happening. (I still haven't got rid of the TV, VCR and DVD players as I intend to, and rearranged my stuff, but I'll get to it.) I also got a cool laptop bag from Timbuk2, and I realized this is the first general-purpose bag (that is to say, not specifically luggage for traveling) that I've bought for myself since college - my other backpacks and bags were given to me.

Although it might seem like the worst possible time to do this, it's actually exactly the right time. As I said, I do need a good laptop for work purposes - I need to be able to go to client sites, for example - and because I was able to start doing freelance work right away, I'm not in a serious financial hole. I do still have a fair amount of that credit card debt that I've periodically complained about, but another effect of leaving work is that I'll have my 401(k) funds to deal with. I have enough there that I can withdraw some to clear up the remaining debt, including covering the new laptop - and yes, I know there's a withdrawal penalty and taxes - and still roll the larger portion over into my IRA. I'm also pretty confident that I'll be able to get steady contract work; provided that goes well, I should have a decent net increase in my net income.

Finally, about that third goal: when I was still living back East, I was a violinist in the Nashua Chamber Orchestra, and I also produced their program books from 1995 to 2002. I really enjoyed doing the layout and production of the books, and I haven't done anything like that since the last one that I did for them in 2002 after moving here. When I talked with John last November, after realizing that I couldn't stay at work much longer, he asked me what it was that I wanted to do, and without hesitation I said "editing and layout." I'd really like to do layout/design/production work again, though I'm not sure how to get into it. Freelance editing is easy, as I have several years now of professional experience to show for that, but all my layout experience is in that one set of program books, done voluntarily; plus I'm entirely self-taught and haven't done any such work in five years. That's why one of my "mental" goals for 2007 is to take a course in graphic design and layout. It probably won't happen until the fall, because I'm busy right now getting the other pieces of my life shuffled around, but I'll have to plan for it and make it happen. In the meantime, if I do find opportunities to jump into that kind of work, I won't pass them up.

So there it is: 2007, the Year of Change. And boy, things are changing. Who knows, maybe I'll even go out on a date after all...

Well, the towel I stuck underneath the sink to absorb the leaking water finally became oversaturated - because I foolishly thought it was air-drying, which of course it wasn't, not enough, and I wasn't wringing it out - so I had to look into the leak. The pedestal turned out to be not too difficult to move, and in fact it is not actually supporting the sink, although I'm nervous about leaning on the sink or letting my cat on it. The leak turned out to be not in the u-bend drain pipe after all; instead, it's the ball-and-socket joint where the lever controlling the drain plug goes in to the drain pipe. I think I should be able to remove it and replace it with a new one, but I'm really unsure about doing that.

In the meantime, I find myself tempted to not fix the leak at all, not from laziness or uncertainty, but from amusement. Whenever the water starts dripping, Nimiel comes running and starts pawing at the falling water. Then she'll stick her head under the pipe to look at the water collecting in the container below, and be startled when more drops fall on her head. It's highly entertaining, but the water's not particularly clean of course since it's the sink drain, and leaving the leak will just lead to more problems soon.

---

Last week, having had the surgeon's okay the week before that, I finally got around to trying my retainers again, and of course neither of them fit right. Yesterday I went to the orthodontist's and had them adjusted. The retainer is making my teeth hurt; it seems as though my teeth all moved in together toward the center of my mouth, because the feeling is of the teeth being pushed back outward. The retainer was trimmed back enough that it's not really pressing on or irritating the area of the surgery, except there's a little pressure on the front teeth. Even with the adjustments, the retainer still doesn't fit quite properly. However, my gums and tissues are still inflamed on the upper left side, and the orthodontist doesn't want to take a casting until the inflammation has gone away, otherwise the new retainer won't fit properly. She had me check in with the surgeon to make sure the inflammation was okay, so I did that this morning, and he said everything looks fine and it's just going to take a while for that swelling to finally clear up.

While I was visiting the surgeon, I also asked about the surgery bill I received, what was going on and what their expectations were about payment. To my relief, they said not to worry about it; with the insurance claim still being processed, they don't expect anything from me until that's resolved. So I've still got some time before I'll find out how much I still owe and work out a plan to pay it, which is okay.

---

I have plans to go to the Woodland Park Zoo with the Saccos and maybe the Dowlers on Sunday. I haven't been before, and neither have the Saccos, even though they've lived here several years longer than I have. Actually, I don't even remember the last time I went to any zoo - I remember that I did not go to the National Zoo in D.C. back when my family took a trip to Virginia in 1978, because I was sick that day, and I was very disappointed that I missed seeing the tigers. I can't remember whether I was on any zoo trips after that. So this should be quite interesting. Hopefully the weather reports are accurate and it'll be a sunny warm day, as it's been cloudy and cool for a while now. We need more summery weather! We don't have all that much time left before summer ends.