“And I’ve been waiting for nine years now and…” – Jale, “Nine Years”
Yes, this is really me.
So what all happened in the (looks carefully) five and a half years since I posted last? Well I unintentionally left on a bit of a cliffhanger, being near broke and being owed about $10,000. Thankfully—if I remember right—my business partner fronted me $2,000 so I could make it through the next month. And eventually the whole $10,000 came through, followed by a gig that gave me enough money to finance a move out of where I was staying so I could move to the Southwest, and even enough to rebuild a small nest egg.
In March 2019 I moved to Tucson, AZ. At first the gig continued for a while, and I was able to start to make a living there. I met up with a couple of meetup groups and slowly started to feel like I’d made the right decision for one. My migraines, which had wrecked my previous year, started to disappear. Then the gig suddenly dried up with nothing to replace it. After a couple of months I was desperate enough to start filling out surveys for small bits of cash. I think I went about four months without any consulting work, though in October I got one small gig. The nest egg was down to almost nothing. I had to borrow money to pay rent. Things were looking bad again. I traveled back to visit my dad for Christmas. I came close to asking him for a loan, something I’d held back from doing before and really didn’t want to do again. He’d gotten re-married in April and I still didn’t know how he was feeling about his future. At the end of the visit he started feeling violently ill. Also the news started talking about some strange disease showing up in China. Those were the last things I remember before I left.
On the drive back I really thought about ending it all. This wasn’t the life I wanted to have. I started thinking that I’d never be able to do any of the things I’d really wanted to do in life. It was looking increasingly unlikely that the consulting job would work out. But I was still mentally and physically unready to start working in an office again. I still felt crushed by my past. The only thing that kept me on the road were my cats…who would feed them if I wasn’t there? I still felt indebted to them for keeping me company during the migraines back East.
I got back to Tucson to a phone call from dad’s wife. He had an intestinal blockage that needed major surgery. A few days later he called me to tell me the blockage was a large malignant tumor. I remember then lying in bed for days, thinking to myself I had to get out of this for him. Even though we’d never really been close, I felt like I couldn’t end things now, not while he was sick. It wouldn’t be fair to him or his new wife or my sister or anyone. I started doing some more things for the consultancy, even putting together an online course—it didn’t make enough money to pay for everything, but it at least allowed me to hold on.
Of course in March 2020 the pandemic started. The bad news was that my meetup groups stopped, never to start again unfortunately. The one social outlet I had disappeared overnight. The good news was that I managed to get an almost full-time gig, one that lasted over two years. That one gig managed to pull me out of not just my financial hole but my emotional pit as well. In my off time I built a pool table in the living room of my place and played for hours a day. When the pandemic started to lift I joined a pool league…I didn’t make many friends there, but at least it was a way to get out. The full-time gig was so successful that other places started noticing, and I was getting more work. Eventually I saved up enough money to move to an apartment closer to the city center—though I had to leave my pool table behind as it didn’t fit in the new place. But the downside was that I was working more and more. The pool league eventually stopped, and I didn’t join another one. I was spending all of my time either working, sleeping, or eating. I wasn’t exercising, and I started putting on a lot of weight. My clothes didn’t fit any more—too embarrassed to go out and get better-fitting clothes, I started spending more time sitting at home in the dark rotating the few outfits I could still fit into, or my bathrobe, or on really bad days, just underwear.
All this time dad still battled his cancer. By late 2021 it had spread to his lungs and liver. By mid-2022 it was starting to become clear that his chemo wasn’t reversing his condition. I visited him for Thanksgiving last year and asked his wife to give me a clear diagnosis (by now he wasn’t really updating me on anything). She was honest that she wasn’t sure how long he had. I had saved up enough that I could afford to move away from Tucson. I decided it was time to move closer to dad. I had been away from my mom when she passed away and I felt like I couldn’t forgive myself if I was away again when dad passed. So I started looking at apartments nearby, even though my apartment lease in Tucson didn’t run out until August 2023. I was hoping he’d still be around when I was able to move. (Spoiler alert before the next entry: he is.)
Part 2 when I can write it.
