Time flies when you're trying to survive, too
An old friend of mine recently asked me about my dark secrets. I told him I tend not to have any. This is true enough, but that's because I come out about them eventually. There's stuff here I haven't been open about until now, but it finally feels like I can do so.
It's been three years since we moved to Bakersfield. By moved, I mean "retreated there as a last resort over homelessness." We were behind on the rent to the landlord for about nine months' worth, give or take a month. Yes, that long. He was unnaturally tolerant. I hope he has many blessings in his life because of his kind heart. Ironically, we were about to be able to at least start paying again thanks to my shifting from unemployment to disability and ending the COBRA payments I'd been making to keep my health benefits in favor of a county low-income health care program. But that might not have saved us in the end anyway.
That period was also notable because I was in a rather deep burn-out state. Five years at my last significant employer frazzled me. I should never have stuck with software QA as a job for as long as I did. The routine kept boring me to tears after six months or so, with a shorter and shorter window of freshness as I worked more QA jobs over the years. Not even five years of technical support freshened me against it when I went back to it. Tolerance and flashes of brilliance on my part kept me at Delivery Agent longer than I probably should've been. And if I needed further evidence of my dire straits, the complete failure that was my one month at Zynga put the capper on it. I'd forgotten basic features of web browsers, my brain was that fried on the subject.
Just to add to the open confession mode I'm in, the apartment we left our ex-landlord was a hellhole of piled-up stuff and a very likely mold infestation from an incompletely cleaned-up waterbed incident several years before. My siblings would be able to testify in court that I was never very good at keeping my room clean. I married my match in that arena. Whatever the reason, the fact remains I have to focus and concentrate to do for my home what so many people seem to be able to do by reflex action. And there's so often something better to do. The current apartment's cluttered but livable, by the by. Not as clean as it might be, but we keep passing twice-yearly property inspections.
We moved down here thinking blackfyr was going to be set up in a computer repair business by an old friend of ours. That dematerialized rapidly due to a turn in fortunes on the friend's part, so we spent the bulk of the first year living off my state disability payments. We were caught flat-footed when the payments ran out. I misunderstood the temporary nature of the program. That's when I made the decision that looks to have the biggest impact on our lives. We went back to college. Admittedly, it was in large part an attempt to drag money back into the picture that wouldn't exist otherwise. But I knew we had to do something.
So here I sit, attending my last semester at Bakersfield College before transferring to National University. Assessing my life right now, I'd say it still needs work. But life is a work in progress. I've come a long way, and barring accident or incident, things are going smoothly enough. I could ask for more, but the fact we're maintaining in some areas and improving in others is something to be proud of.
It's been three years since we moved to Bakersfield. By moved, I mean "retreated there as a last resort over homelessness." We were behind on the rent to the landlord for about nine months' worth, give or take a month. Yes, that long. He was unnaturally tolerant. I hope he has many blessings in his life because of his kind heart. Ironically, we were about to be able to at least start paying again thanks to my shifting from unemployment to disability and ending the COBRA payments I'd been making to keep my health benefits in favor of a county low-income health care program. But that might not have saved us in the end anyway.
That period was also notable because I was in a rather deep burn-out state. Five years at my last significant employer frazzled me. I should never have stuck with software QA as a job for as long as I did. The routine kept boring me to tears after six months or so, with a shorter and shorter window of freshness as I worked more QA jobs over the years. Not even five years of technical support freshened me against it when I went back to it. Tolerance and flashes of brilliance on my part kept me at Delivery Agent longer than I probably should've been. And if I needed further evidence of my dire straits, the complete failure that was my one month at Zynga put the capper on it. I'd forgotten basic features of web browsers, my brain was that fried on the subject.
Just to add to the open confession mode I'm in, the apartment we left our ex-landlord was a hellhole of piled-up stuff and a very likely mold infestation from an incompletely cleaned-up waterbed incident several years before. My siblings would be able to testify in court that I was never very good at keeping my room clean. I married my match in that arena. Whatever the reason, the fact remains I have to focus and concentrate to do for my home what so many people seem to be able to do by reflex action. And there's so often something better to do. The current apartment's cluttered but livable, by the by. Not as clean as it might be, but we keep passing twice-yearly property inspections.
We moved down here thinking blackfyr was going to be set up in a computer repair business by an old friend of ours. That dematerialized rapidly due to a turn in fortunes on the friend's part, so we spent the bulk of the first year living off my state disability payments. We were caught flat-footed when the payments ran out. I misunderstood the temporary nature of the program. That's when I made the decision that looks to have the biggest impact on our lives. We went back to college. Admittedly, it was in large part an attempt to drag money back into the picture that wouldn't exist otherwise. But I knew we had to do something.
So here I sit, attending my last semester at Bakersfield College before transferring to National University. Assessing my life right now, I'd say it still needs work. But life is a work in progress. I've come a long way, and barring accident or incident, things are going smoothly enough. I could ask for more, but the fact we're maintaining in some areas and improving in others is something to be proud of.