Unnecessary Biography
Sunday, September 18th, 2022 08:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
snoozefestaudioI was born the fifth kid out of six to silent gen parents, same month as the moon landing. The house I grew up in is the house my father grew up in, and the house his mother grew up in, and the house her father helped his father build, around 1880. It's the house Dad and I still live in now, and where I record the crickets.
Kid in the 1970s, Teenager in the 1980s.
Didn't hold a job in high school.
I was in a band with one or two brothers from the late 1980s through the mid 1990s, and continued to be a musician who recorded in my living room through the early 2000s.
I went to community college straight out of high school, and majored in art, while working different part times jobs in retail, usually stocking and running cash registers.
I had a brief stint at state university for one semester, where I spent all of my time in a coffeehouse, or bars on the same strip, and almost never went to class.
I dropped out of college to move to Los Angeles, where some of my siblings lived, but I didn't like it there, and moved back home three months later... by which time I'd turned twenty-one.
--<>--
I found a good full time job at a local university working in the print shop and mail room. And the idea was that after the first year, I'd start taking classes there, because I'd get a discount on the tuition.
But after that first year, as I turned 22, that all got derailed, after I was introduced to weed!
I found myself living with a friend renting the downstairs of a house in town, and back in a band with a brother, and working part time retail jobs again... growing my hair super long and like... casting birth charts and drawing my own deck of tarot cards.
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As a teen, I was a clean kid. But at age 20, I'd began driking coffee. A few months later I'd started smoking. And a few months after that, I'd started drinking.
Those vices had contributed to me dropping out of college, because they lead me to spend all my time at the coffeehouse or the bars hanging out with other bohemians.
But when weed came along, it was disruptive on a whole other level!
I think it was a combination of;
Having started smoking weed at 22, I was back home with the P's and unemployed by 23, and stayed an unemployed bum for about two years.
Two years in which I got stoned on the daily, and spent all my time drawing, writing songs, and embarassing myself at parties... all dressed in rags with long hair... totally out of it, while the same people who'd introduced me to weed were now suddenly getting jobs and getting married! Some were even having babies!
I suddenly looked like the big loser of the group.
But through those two years I didn't worry about it much. I was having fun by myself, in my own little world, and... I felt they were all making big mistakes getting married or having babies so young... in the name of trying to look like adults.
--<>--
At any rate, 1994 came around, and I'd finally gotten a little tired of never having any money, and living in a dream world. And I knew I'd be turning 25 in the summer. So I kind of gravitated back toward reality, cut my hair, and got that part time job at the Public Library, I reflect on so much.
And that was the same year I started recording sound effects, including crickets.
And I still am very nostalgic for this little passage of my life, in 1994, where I still had one foot in this hallucinagenic dream world, and another foot in reality again, holding a job and so forth.
By 1995 I was more or less a normal person again... still working part time, but not smoking nearly as much weed, and generally being more responsible and logical.
And by the fall of 1996, I was living with a new girlfriend, in the tower downtown, a block away from the library.
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As far as girlfriends go... again, didn't have any in high school.
My first girlfriend Jenny was at community college, when I was 19. She was 17.
Jenny and I had an on again off again romance for a few years, and then Laurie came around just before that weed period.
Jenny had been the cute, blonde, girl next door girlfriend. And then Laurie was the devious, black haired, wiccan, bisexual, polyamorous girlfriend.
But after three years being single, I got together with Sabrina in 1996, and she was the... mostly level headed, casual girlfriend, but also the vegetarian, animal rights activist girlfriend.
We lived together for three years... moving from the tower downtown, to a slightly larger 2nd floor walk up about a mile from the Library, in fall of 1997.
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Those three years with Sabrina... spanning from 1996 to 1999, were impactful, and a bit dramatic, because the internet was becoming a thing, and I was also breaking away from the band I'd been in with my brother since 1992.
That band, with my brother, had already gone through huge periods of dormancy between 93 and 96, because my brother and our drummer had both moved to another town, and I didn't always have access to a vehicle, and we didn't always have a place to practice...
...and my brother was going through a divorce... and so was the drummer... and they both had babies....
And I was doing my own thing at home... drawing art and recording crickets...
But there had been a concerted effort in 1997, to get back on track... a kind of last gasp of the band. But it wasn't going anywhere, and I wasn't into it anymore, so I quit. And when I did, my brother blamed Sabrina for turning me against him, and... there was some drama.
--<>--
But the internet was also becoming a thing, and it wasn't long after I quit the band in the summer of 1997, that Sabrina and I got ourselves two Packard Bell PC desktop computers, running windows 95, and got ourselves a 56K dial up line to access the world wide web.
Because one of my friends at the time was a huge computer nerd, who'd actually been online since the Compuserve days, we did not go the AOL route. He had us subscribe to some neutral ISP, and run Netscape Navigator as our browsers, and use Yahoo as our portal.
Two things were all the rage in 1997... instant messaging, and having your own web page, at either Angelfire, or Geocities.
It is impossible to describe how mind blowing, and how fun, instant messaging was! We had never done anything but talk to each other on phones... and in the earlier 90's some of us finally had cellular phones. But being able to type a conversation on a screen... for some reason, felt like the craziest, coolest thing in the universe!.. like, cooler than video games!
But many of my old coffeehouse bohemian friends now had web pages on Angelfire, in which they showcased their poetry, or whatever. Pages they'd coded themselves, with hyperlinks, and... an animated GIF of a mailbox that linked to their email... and of course... the obligatory, GUEST BOOK!
Don't forget to sign my guest book!
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The internet was like a heavy curtain that, as it fell, divided my generation forever into two halves... the ones who got online, and are still online today... and the ones who backed away, out of paranoia, and have never been online.
I think this is a phenomenon specific to Gen X... that a certain number of us just never got online... never will... and don't even own computers.
Because, as we know, Boomers, and even some Silents, would eventually embrace the internet in their retirement years... and everybody from Millenials onward just grew up with it.
But there are Gen Xers out there who... just never touched it, and never will... Old friends of mine, old classmates... who just disappeared into the mists of time, never to be heard from again... who cannot be traced to this day.
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But in 1997, there was NO WAY, I was NOT going to create my own web page!
And since I still worked at the library, I just grabbed three books on how to do HTML, checked them out, and got to work!
By June, I had a nice web page, called, "Old Man Cricket's Hole in the Ground," which featured a big splash graphic I created in MS Paint, that was an image map with links all over it, that opened different content in a scrolling side frame... because it was a frameset!...
I was really into web design!
Old Man Cricket, was the name I'd invented back in 1994 for my sound effects tapes. It was supposed to have the same vibe as Old Farmer's Almanac, I guess. But in my first column to introduce the website, I said that I was Old Man Cricket, because I was about to turn 28... which seemed impossibly old, at the time.
I couldn't actually feature any audio on the page, because MP3 format didn't yet exist.
So instead, the main content was just me writing a weekly column, blathering on mostly about nature and the change of seasons.
So, you'd go to the page, click part of the image map, and bring up the latest column in the frame on the left. There were navigation buttons in the top of that frame to let you see older columns.
I did think of this as being like a newspaper columnist. It used to be quite a thing in newspapers large and small to have columnists who just... wrote these little essays about whatever was in their head.
The term, blog, would not be invented for another two or three years.
And I called Old Man Cricket's column, The Dither. Though it should have been called, The Blather. But it was a thing that struck everybody as super novel at the time!
Wow! Look!.. he's got a weekly column on his web page!.. and it's in a frameset!
--<>--
By the fall of 1998, I quit my job at the Library to become a freelance web designer. And I was serious about it.
And for a while there, I was making more money as a web designer than I'd been making at the library.
But Sabrina thought it was too risky, and we started having fights about it.
That wasn't the only reason we broke up in January of 1999, but it was a contributing factor. In the grand scheme it was just... the end of a three year relationship living together. It happens. It happened to us.
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I moved back into the P's house in January of 1999, but was still doing well as a freelance web designer, and was able to move back out in April.
I moved back to the tower downtown, into a studio apartment on the 17th floor, and really felt like I was on the way!
It was exciting to be single, and living on my own, in a walkable downtown, working from home. And I taught myself Javascript, and CSS, and was really doing some impressive stuff, and coming up with clever, cryptic JS workarounds to get browser compatibility between Netscape and Internet Explorer.
But the problem was that I didn't have a car.
I reasoned I didn't need one, but it was a bit difficult to get groceries on the bus.
And in July, I started dating Kate, who lived out of town.
Kate lived with her parents, but had a car, so it was on her to drive 30 minutes to see me every weekend, and drive us around if we wanted to go out beyond the bars within walking distance...
...or drive me back to her town, if she wanted to hang out there... and drive me back home again... and drive herself back home alone.
--<>--
Still, Kate and I had a blast through the summer of 1999. Jenny had been the girl next door. Laurie had been the wiccan. Sabrina had been the vegetarian. But Kate...
Kate was the smoking, two-fisted drinking, cursing, music blasting, bar hopping, bad ass party girl!
I never had more fun, or felt more in love, than when I was with Kate.
There was more to her than just being a bad ass, she was intelligent, and had an artistic side, and an old fashioned side, having been very close with the grandmother whom she'd been named after.
She was a very three dimensional character, but... she was a hell of a lot of fun too!
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In September of 1999, the web design work began to dry up.
If I'd had a car, I could've gotten a part time job somewhere to make ends meet and ridden it out until landed a new client, but instead, the money dried up too fast, and I had to move back home in October of 1999.
Kate stuck with me through the holidays, but... it was clear she was losing interest.
I looked like a good prospect at first, living on the seventeenth floor of an old, art deco tower, working on the internet. But now I was just a loser at his parent's house, who had turned 30.
Our last date was New Year's Eve of 1999, and we broke up on January 1st 2000.
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I started the new century heartbroken... and thirty.
But by March, that computer nerd friend of mine managed to get me a job where he worked, with a start up ISP company, installing DSL around the metro.
DSL was the big new thing in early 2000.
Before this point, most people had been using 56K dial-up, but DSL offered people speeds never before imagined.
I abandoned web design to become a full time DSL install technician, spending most of my time out in the field all alone, with my wits, and a trunk full of tools.
I did swing a new vehicle for this job, and the reason that I could do it, was because the job paid way more than I'd ever made before. I started at $20.00 per hour!.. which is STILL a big deal today!.. even if it's not really much money, adjusted for inflation.
I did so well, as a DSL install technician that I was able to move out into my own apartment again by August of 2000.
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By the end of 2000, I had a vehicle, was a hardworking man of the metro, and was holding down a huge flat in Naperville!
The sky seemed the limit!.. as I'd only make more money and move up higher in the world of IT as time went on. Indeed, by the end of 2000, I was also installing CCD security cameras, and networking them together... with most of that work being in Chicago itself!
--<>--
I tried mightily, during 2000, to win Kate back. Her only problem with me had been that I'd run out of money and moved back with my parents, but now?... I was back on top, baby!.. with more money and a bigger apartment than ever!.. and a FUTURE!
But over the same time period that I'd been finding my way into this new job, Kate had been doing some soul searching of her own, and decided to join the National Guard.
By the time we were talking on the phone again, in late 2000, she was just on the verge of signing the papers.
I tried like hell to talk her out of it. I told her the national guard talks a good game, saying it's just a couple weekends of laser tag and free college, but... if there's a war, you'll have to go fight it!
She said she'd talked to an old guy she worked with, who was really smart, and he'd assured her, America was not gonna be getting into any kind of war in the next three years.
I failed to talk Kate out of signing the papers, and, though we did go on one date in January of 2001... she'd already joined up and would be starting boot camp at the end of March.
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Early 2001 was a bit depressing, but... I did have a good job and everything so, I took to the Yahoo Personals, hoping to find somebody new.
When I first met Patti online, I thought the age gap was a bit too wide, and she was a bit too straight laced... neither drinking, nor smoking. But we did get along, and she had a hilarious sense of humor, so we agreed to just be friends.
I was very serious about that. I was not trying to groom some younger woman, but we had both been through recent heart breaks and both had the same sense of humor, so she was a welcome companion online to instant message with.
--<>--
Looking back, it's obvious that Patti... who was 21 at the time, was a typical Millenial. But there was no stereotypes about Millenials yet.
Still, she was very introverted, but also chronically online. She wrote fan fiction. She ran message boards full of fans... for very Millenial things like the Backstreet Boys, and the Simpsons.
She would later go on to get super into Harry Potter, and American Idol.
But at any rate, we just kind of gravitated into a relationship. We were too friendly for too long online, and by March of 2001... we were dating!
--<>--
In terms of girlfriend character types, Patti was the comedian girlfriend.
I'd dated the girl next door, the wiccan, the vegetarian, and the bad ass party girl, but Patti was the comedian.
But, hilarious as she was, Patti wanted to settle down... ASAP! The talk of marriage, home ownership, and babies, came very early, and was discussed often.
I figured, at age 31, it was probably time to settle down. I was only gonna be advancing in the IT world. Patty was hilarioius. Why not?
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She had a little dog at home, whom she loved, but Patti's mother wanted to give it away, because it peed on the floor all the time. And Patti, heartbroken over losing the dog, wanted me to adopt it, and keep it in my Naperville flat.
I was NOT about to do that! But I felt for her, so I looked for a compromise.
One of my brothers in Aurora had kittens to give away, so... the compromise was that I would adopt a kitten.
Patti had no experience with cats, but... recognized that I was trying, and agreed to settle for a kitten.
I wound up adopting two little black kittens in March of 2001... hoping they would keep each other company while I was out in Chicago all day long installing DSL. And I named them, Jet and Mauli.
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Through April, May, and June of 2001, things were going well.
Jet and Mauli were adorable. Patti got along with them well enough, and stayed with me every weekend. And thorugh the weeks, I went out and worked my lucrative job as an install tech in the big city.
But in June... something was happening in the tech industry. Stocks in big internet start ups were beginning to flag a bit.
I used to listen to NPR on the radio all day, driving around in the city and commuting back home in the evening. The tech industry was not doing well, but they kept saying it was just a hiccup, and would not affect the service sector, which I was part of.
Prior to this, there had been a huge bubble... which had begun around 1998, where IT startups in every sector were just soaring sky high.
But by July of 2001... they were calling it, The Dot.Com Bust, and it WAS hitting every sector of the industry... including my own company, an outfit called, Texolutions.
Work dried up completely for us techs in July of 2001, but Texolutions continued to pay us for 40 hours a week, without flinching... until finally... in August, the game was up. Texolutions filed for bankruptcy, and all of us found ourselves in the unemployment office.
--<>--
Congress had passed an extension to unemployment benefits around this time, because of the big bust. So... not only was this the only time in my life I qualified for unemployment, but... it would carry me through until June of 2002.
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Monday, August 11th, 2001, was my first day on unemployment.
I decided to give myself a break and take it easy for one month.
I would get back on the horse and look for work, come Monday, September 10th, 2001.
--<>--
I did manage to find a little web design work to supplement my income. Under the terms of the unemployment, I was allowed to make up to half what the benefit payment was, and still stay on the dole.
Patti and I weren't worried too much, as September began.
Surely I'd find something soon.
On Monday, September 10th, as promised, I began sending out resume's on Monster.Com, and then went to my parent's house to do my laundry that night.
On Tuesday, September 11th... well you know what happened that morning.
------------{=0=}------------
After September 11th, Patti was a lot more worried about everything. When the planes began to fly again, she was freaked out by every passing plane.
She wasn't as confident we'd just bounce back from everything, and neither was I, because the Dot.Com Bust had been one thing, but this attack had now been a further complication to the economy and the job market.
Maybe I wasn't gonna pick up where I left off making twenty bucks an hour in a few months!
The whole idea of getting married, buying a house, and having a baby started to look a LOT sketchier than it had in the spring!
And on top of all that... in the back of my head I knew... Kate was still out there in Basic Training!
--<>--
Kate had started basic training in April of 2001! She wasn't getting out until December!
But NOW... President Bush was already forming a coalition to send troops into Afghanistan!.. and people already knew he had Iraq in his sights as a possible second front!
I couldn't get it out of my head, Kate telling me the previous winter, that some old fart she worked with assured her we weren't going to war in the next three years!
GODDAMMIT!
It took 9/11 to make me realize that I was not over Kate, and that this whole relationship with Patti was a rebound... because of how worried sick I became for Kate going to war!
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SPEED ROUND
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In early 2007, my life started over completely.
I was single again, holding down a small flat in Aurora, with four cats, but commuting to Elgin every day for a Janitor gig that finally paid a double digit wage.
It was awkward at first, working for Patti's Dad, after we'd broken up, and it wasn't easy for me to make ends meet with just my single income... and give the four cats all the attention they needed... but I managed to get by, and after a few months, Patti's Dad moved on to a new hospital and my new boss was some rando who didn't know me at all.
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In 2008, that rando boss also left, and the entire housekeeping department came under the perview of a guy named Ray, who headed up the engineering department. And when he got wind that I had four years experience doing apartment maintenance, Ray began talking to me about moving up to Engineering.
I said I'd think about it.
Kate and I began to talk again on the phone. She'd been in Iraq through all of 2003 and most of 2004, but was home by 2005, and out of the National Guard completely by 2006.
She came to visit at my new flat in the fall of 2008, four or five times.
We smoked, drank, and had fun, but... neither of us was ready to get too close.
She had PTSD from the warfront, and I was still kind of a mess after my own, comparatively silly hardships.
We decided to just be friends.
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In 2009, as Kate moved to Wisconsin to live with a new boyfriend she'd met online, I got word from Ray that the offsite I was mopping floors in, was gonna be phased out.
In November of 2009, I was hired into the engineering department and moved over to the main hospital.
------------{=0=}------------
2010 was a difficult year, emotionally.
I figured that I might find a new girlfriend at the main hospital, but I was also turning 41, so... I had an expiration date on my balding forehead, and though I did almost spark something up with three different women that year, and a fourth living in my courtyard... all of them fizzled out before there could even be a first date.
Also, Eli left one day in June of 2010, and never returned.
And then in September of 2010, Wylie, who was only seven years old, died of congestive heart failure.
So by fall of 2010, it was just me, and Jet & Mauli... and I began to realize, there wasn't gonna be a sixth girlfriend.
Never in one year, before or after 2010, did I spend so much time, just sitting on my front stoop... feeling my heart wrench for this or that reason.
But I did still have Jet & Mauli, and my flat, and my good job that I loved. So, I eventually got over it.
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Through 2011, 2012, and 2013, I just vibed along with life.
Things were easier with just my two original cats.
Life was easier with no woman around, and no idea that one would ever again materialize.
I fixed up the flat... painted and redecorated. I got my teeth fixed up and got glasses. Traded in one car for another car. I was making YouTube videos... having fun.
I finally graduated back to first shift, after six years on second shift, and everybody on first shift loved me at work... and I was just this guy in his forties, with two cats, doing everything right!
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But my Mom fell ill in the spring of 2014.
She and Dad had been living a couple miles away for all these years, and I'd visited them regularly and talked to Mom on the phone every week. I'd done their repairs for them for free, and we'd gone out to eat on the holidays.
But in 2014, what started as a short stay in the hospital for Mom, proved to be the start of an ongoing health problem that kept coming back and getting worse all year.
By August, she'd gone to a rehab center for three weeks, and I knew it was time for me to move back home.
I flipped the upstairs at home in August, and moved back in, with Jet and Mauli, on September 1st, at which point Mom had been released from rehab and was thought to be out of the woods.
But a week later, she was back in the hospital, sicker than ever, and wound up in another rehab center, where she stayed... the rest of 2014, and into 2015.
And she died on February 16th of 2015.
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2015, then, began a new era, in which it was me and Dad, here at the old family house, with Jet and Mauli, now getting old themselves, upstairs with me.
I had a lot more disposeable cash, now that I was back at home, and I was also now making more money than ever before. I'd finally passed that $20.00 and hour mark again, that I had not seen since 2000.
Through 2015, 2016, and 2017, I continued to get more raises at work... paid off the car I'd bought in 2013... bought all kinds of furniture, clothes, and appliances for both myself and Dad... and took care of my aging kitties.
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In 2018, I went back to 2nd shift. It was an instant dollar an hour raise, and I found I just liked it better than day shift, after having done day shift for five whole years.
I was making bank. Dad was still healthy as a horse. I had a great new phone that could record in stereo.
I decided to start recording crickets and thunderstorms again... just as I had done waaaaay back in 1994.
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In 2019, I started landscaping the yard, and also investing heavily in creating a workshop down in the cellar to deal with looming maintenance issues around the house.
2019 was the absolute pinacle of me, loving my job, owning every problem at home with my wealth, and seizing the opportunity to just... transform the whole property and look ahead toward the far future, when I'd own this house, and completely renovate it.
But... 2019 was the year we had a hostile corporate takeover at work, and my boss was fired... and his boss... and his boss... and the president of the hospital... and her VP in charge of facilities... and six of my coworkers.
And they came in like Nazi's and clamped down on everything, ruling through fear.
And Dad was diagnosed with bladder cancer... and spent tons of time either in the hospital, or getting procedures done and recoving at home.
And Jet died!
And holy fuck!
------------{=0=}------------
By early 2020, Dad had survived his bladder Cancer. They'd caught it early and nipped it in the bud. He was back to 100%, driving his car, and living his life.
But at work, the few work friends I had left, who'd survived the 2019 firings, were now leaving to work for other, less Nazi companies.
Just as covid hit, in March of 2020, I found myself all alone, without any friends or allies, in a hospital that had already become a hostile working environment... but now became a lot darker, as we were all branded essential workers... everybody in the building wearing masks and gloves, with plastic visors, as every inch of the building got sheilded with plexiglass, and all the visitors were expelled.
It became a dystopian nightmare.
I still managed to hang on and finish up my cellar workshop that spring, installing a sink and an exhaust fan down there, and using a stimulus check to buy a meiter saw, as I invested my own money in more power tools.
One night in June I came home and found Mauli dead on the floor.
She'd seemed fine before I'd left... hopping up on the table to eat her food like normal... but she was 19... and she apparently just... kicked the bucket without warning, while I'd been at work.
--<>--
Despite all the fear of covid in 2020, neither Dad nor I ever got it. And in fact, Dad never once went to the ER or the clinic for anything the whole year.
I also managed to hang on to my job through all of 2020, investing every spare penny into my basement shop.
But then, in January of 2021... after I'd willingly covered Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years... and was looking forward to taking a couple weeks off, finally, for my own holiday... they came for me.
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The rats had ratted me out for smoking on the roof, and my new rat boss, who'd been angling to get rid of me through all of 2020 had me where he wanted me. I was facing three months of probation, during which, if I so much as uttered a curse word, I could be terminated.
A polar vortex was on the way, and I was scheduled to do grounds outside, at night, thorugh February... without smoking... or uttering a curse word... and he was ready to pile a bunch of other nasty bullshit on my shoulders too.
So of course I resigned.
One of my brothers likes to joke that I started the Great Resignation... because that became a thing in the headlines a month later.
--<>--
Having worked for the hospital 13 years, I'd saved up 30K+ dollars in my 401K, which I cashed out immediately.
At home, deep cleaning the flat upstairs in late January, with no cats... with no job... dusting off all the little knick knacks and keepsakes I'd accumulated through my twenties... and thirties... and forties... through five girlfriends, and so many jobs, and so many cars, and so many presidents...
...I shrugged and thought, I have bounced back before.
--<>--
I made such good use of that 30K, through 2021... it was insane how well I managed that money, considering it was less than I'd been making per year, previous to that.
I landscaped the yard. I built a shed. I trenched in flex drains from the gutters. I built a gate for the dog yard. I repaired the porch enclosure and repainted the side porch. I fixed doors. I repaired the foundation. I ran new electrical, and heated pipes in the crawl space that had been prone to freezing.
I repaired steps, and draft proofed the whole house... to the point where we began saving 15% on our energy bills.
I bought a lawn mower!
And I slept in!.. and I puttered around the house for a year in jeans and loafers!.. and by year's end, I still had enough money left to make it through the winter.
2021 was, in many ways, my perfect year! It was all vacation. It was all paid for. And I accomplished all my goals.
------------{=0=}------------
And that brings us to 2022.
The first half of this year was pretty sketchy.
I had this plan to go into business for myself as a handyman. I had all the tools, and I had the cellar workshop. All the work on the house was done, so I was free to persue this new adventure. And I even managed to trade in my little commuter car Yaris for a RAV4 van with a roof rack, that was better for the handyman gig.
In a different year, this plan may have worked. But Putin started a war in Ukraine in February, which drove gas prices up to five bucks a gallon, at the same time that supply chain issues, resulting from the aftermath of the pandemic, lead to inflation at the grocery store, and empty shelves, as people began hoarding goods.
And that is not the type of economic environment in which folks are looking to hire the freelance handyman!
Rather, it's the economic environment where everybody is saying, We can live with this leaky faucet and sticky door another year! We can suffer all these other maintenance issues another year!
--<>--
And you know the story from there.
I skated by on fumes for a couple months... getting really hermitty... and existential... and then Snoop & Prowly came along... which forced me to actually look for a job and land the one I'm starting tomorrow.
------------{=0=}------------
Part time... just as I did in 1994... getting back into the swing of reality after over a year of unemployment that time around.
But, Janitor, with a bigger corporation... like I did with the hospital in 2007, that allowed me to work my way up over the years.
Two identical twin cats... like I did in 2000... who will hopefully be with me for 18 or 19 years.
And I've still got Dad in the land of the living, for the moment!
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That's my unnecessary Biography... and tomorrow, we rock & roll!
°¦}
https://soundcloud.com/snoozefestaudio
Kid in the 1970s, Teenager in the 1980s.
Didn't hold a job in high school.
I was in a band with one or two brothers from the late 1980s through the mid 1990s, and continued to be a musician who recorded in my living room through the early 2000s.
I went to community college straight out of high school, and majored in art, while working different part times jobs in retail, usually stocking and running cash registers.
I had a brief stint at state university for one semester, where I spent all of my time in a coffeehouse, or bars on the same strip, and almost never went to class.
I dropped out of college to move to Los Angeles, where some of my siblings lived, but I didn't like it there, and moved back home three months later... by which time I'd turned twenty-one.
I found a good full time job at a local university working in the print shop and mail room. And the idea was that after the first year, I'd start taking classes there, because I'd get a discount on the tuition.
But after that first year, as I turned 22, that all got derailed, after I was introduced to weed!
I found myself living with a friend renting the downstairs of a house in town, and back in a band with a brother, and working part time retail jobs again... growing my hair super long and like... casting birth charts and drawing my own deck of tarot cards.
As a teen, I was a clean kid. But at age 20, I'd began driking coffee. A few months later I'd started smoking. And a few months after that, I'd started drinking.
Those vices had contributed to me dropping out of college, because they lead me to spend all my time at the coffeehouse or the bars hanging out with other bohemians.
But when weed came along, it was disruptive on a whole other level!
I think it was a combination of;
- I was a touch schizophrenic and didn't know it.
- The unregulated weed back then could be insanely potent, to the point of bordering on hallucinagenic!
Having started smoking weed at 22, I was back home with the P's and unemployed by 23, and stayed an unemployed bum for about two years.
Two years in which I got stoned on the daily, and spent all my time drawing, writing songs, and embarassing myself at parties... all dressed in rags with long hair... totally out of it, while the same people who'd introduced me to weed were now suddenly getting jobs and getting married! Some were even having babies!
I suddenly looked like the big loser of the group.
But through those two years I didn't worry about it much. I was having fun by myself, in my own little world, and... I felt they were all making big mistakes getting married or having babies so young... in the name of trying to look like adults.
At any rate, 1994 came around, and I'd finally gotten a little tired of never having any money, and living in a dream world. And I knew I'd be turning 25 in the summer. So I kind of gravitated back toward reality, cut my hair, and got that part time job at the Public Library, I reflect on so much.
And that was the same year I started recording sound effects, including crickets.
And I still am very nostalgic for this little passage of my life, in 1994, where I still had one foot in this hallucinagenic dream world, and another foot in reality again, holding a job and so forth.
By 1995 I was more or less a normal person again... still working part time, but not smoking nearly as much weed, and generally being more responsible and logical.
And by the fall of 1996, I was living with a new girlfriend, in the tower downtown, a block away from the library.
As far as girlfriends go... again, didn't have any in high school.
My first girlfriend Jenny was at community college, when I was 19. She was 17.
Jenny and I had an on again off again romance for a few years, and then Laurie came around just before that weed period.
Jenny had been the cute, blonde, girl next door girlfriend. And then Laurie was the devious, black haired, wiccan, bisexual, polyamorous girlfriend.
But after three years being single, I got together with Sabrina in 1996, and she was the... mostly level headed, casual girlfriend, but also the vegetarian, animal rights activist girlfriend.
We lived together for three years... moving from the tower downtown, to a slightly larger 2nd floor walk up about a mile from the Library, in fall of 1997.
Those three years with Sabrina... spanning from 1996 to 1999, were impactful, and a bit dramatic, because the internet was becoming a thing, and I was also breaking away from the band I'd been in with my brother since 1992.
That band, with my brother, had already gone through huge periods of dormancy between 93 and 96, because my brother and our drummer had both moved to another town, and I didn't always have access to a vehicle, and we didn't always have a place to practice...
...and my brother was going through a divorce... and so was the drummer... and they both had babies....
And I was doing my own thing at home... drawing art and recording crickets...
But there had been a concerted effort in 1997, to get back on track... a kind of last gasp of the band. But it wasn't going anywhere, and I wasn't into it anymore, so I quit. And when I did, my brother blamed Sabrina for turning me against him, and... there was some drama.
But the internet was also becoming a thing, and it wasn't long after I quit the band in the summer of 1997, that Sabrina and I got ourselves two Packard Bell PC desktop computers, running windows 95, and got ourselves a 56K dial up line to access the world wide web.
Because one of my friends at the time was a huge computer nerd, who'd actually been online since the Compuserve days, we did not go the AOL route. He had us subscribe to some neutral ISP, and run Netscape Navigator as our browsers, and use Yahoo as our portal.
Two things were all the rage in 1997... instant messaging, and having your own web page, at either Angelfire, or Geocities.
It is impossible to describe how mind blowing, and how fun, instant messaging was! We had never done anything but talk to each other on phones... and in the earlier 90's some of us finally had cellular phones. But being able to type a conversation on a screen... for some reason, felt like the craziest, coolest thing in the universe!.. like, cooler than video games!
But many of my old coffeehouse bohemian friends now had web pages on Angelfire, in which they showcased their poetry, or whatever. Pages they'd coded themselves, with hyperlinks, and... an animated GIF of a mailbox that linked to their email... and of course... the obligatory, GUEST BOOK!
Don't forget to sign my guest book!
The internet was like a heavy curtain that, as it fell, divided my generation forever into two halves... the ones who got online, and are still online today... and the ones who backed away, out of paranoia, and have never been online.
I think this is a phenomenon specific to Gen X... that a certain number of us just never got online... never will... and don't even own computers.
Because, as we know, Boomers, and even some Silents, would eventually embrace the internet in their retirement years... and everybody from Millenials onward just grew up with it.
But there are Gen Xers out there who... just never touched it, and never will... Old friends of mine, old classmates... who just disappeared into the mists of time, never to be heard from again... who cannot be traced to this day.
But in 1997, there was NO WAY, I was NOT going to create my own web page!
And since I still worked at the library, I just grabbed three books on how to do HTML, checked them out, and got to work!
By June, I had a nice web page, called, "Old Man Cricket's Hole in the Ground," which featured a big splash graphic I created in MS Paint, that was an image map with links all over it, that opened different content in a scrolling side frame... because it was a frameset!...
I was really into web design!
Old Man Cricket, was the name I'd invented back in 1994 for my sound effects tapes. It was supposed to have the same vibe as Old Farmer's Almanac, I guess. But in my first column to introduce the website, I said that I was Old Man Cricket, because I was about to turn 28... which seemed impossibly old, at the time.
I couldn't actually feature any audio on the page, because MP3 format didn't yet exist.
So instead, the main content was just me writing a weekly column, blathering on mostly about nature and the change of seasons.
So, you'd go to the page, click part of the image map, and bring up the latest column in the frame on the left. There were navigation buttons in the top of that frame to let you see older columns.
I did think of this as being like a newspaper columnist. It used to be quite a thing in newspapers large and small to have columnists who just... wrote these little essays about whatever was in their head.
The term, blog, would not be invented for another two or three years.
And I called Old Man Cricket's column, The Dither. Though it should have been called, The Blather. But it was a thing that struck everybody as super novel at the time!
Wow! Look!.. he's got a weekly column on his web page!.. and it's in a frameset!
By the fall of 1998, I quit my job at the Library to become a freelance web designer. And I was serious about it.
And for a while there, I was making more money as a web designer than I'd been making at the library.
But Sabrina thought it was too risky, and we started having fights about it.
That wasn't the only reason we broke up in January of 1999, but it was a contributing factor. In the grand scheme it was just... the end of a three year relationship living together. It happens. It happened to us.
I moved back into the P's house in January of 1999, but was still doing well as a freelance web designer, and was able to move back out in April.
I moved back to the tower downtown, into a studio apartment on the 17th floor, and really felt like I was on the way!
It was exciting to be single, and living on my own, in a walkable downtown, working from home. And I taught myself Javascript, and CSS, and was really doing some impressive stuff, and coming up with clever, cryptic JS workarounds to get browser compatibility between Netscape and Internet Explorer.
But the problem was that I didn't have a car.
I reasoned I didn't need one, but it was a bit difficult to get groceries on the bus.
And in July, I started dating Kate, who lived out of town.
Kate lived with her parents, but had a car, so it was on her to drive 30 minutes to see me every weekend, and drive us around if we wanted to go out beyond the bars within walking distance...
...or drive me back to her town, if she wanted to hang out there... and drive me back home again... and drive herself back home alone.
Still, Kate and I had a blast through the summer of 1999. Jenny had been the girl next door. Laurie had been the wiccan. Sabrina had been the vegetarian. But Kate...
Kate was the smoking, two-fisted drinking, cursing, music blasting, bar hopping, bad ass party girl!
I never had more fun, or felt more in love, than when I was with Kate.
There was more to her than just being a bad ass, she was intelligent, and had an artistic side, and an old fashioned side, having been very close with the grandmother whom she'd been named after.
She was a very three dimensional character, but... she was a hell of a lot of fun too!
In September of 1999, the web design work began to dry up.
If I'd had a car, I could've gotten a part time job somewhere to make ends meet and ridden it out until landed a new client, but instead, the money dried up too fast, and I had to move back home in October of 1999.
Kate stuck with me through the holidays, but... it was clear she was losing interest.
I looked like a good prospect at first, living on the seventeenth floor of an old, art deco tower, working on the internet. But now I was just a loser at his parent's house, who had turned 30.
Our last date was New Year's Eve of 1999, and we broke up on January 1st 2000.
I started the new century heartbroken... and thirty.
But by March, that computer nerd friend of mine managed to get me a job where he worked, with a start up ISP company, installing DSL around the metro.
DSL was the big new thing in early 2000.
Before this point, most people had been using 56K dial-up, but DSL offered people speeds never before imagined.
I abandoned web design to become a full time DSL install technician, spending most of my time out in the field all alone, with my wits, and a trunk full of tools.
I did swing a new vehicle for this job, and the reason that I could do it, was because the job paid way more than I'd ever made before. I started at $20.00 per hour!.. which is STILL a big deal today!.. even if it's not really much money, adjusted for inflation.
I did so well, as a DSL install technician that I was able to move out into my own apartment again by August of 2000.
By the end of 2000, I had a vehicle, was a hardworking man of the metro, and was holding down a huge flat in Naperville!
The sky seemed the limit!.. as I'd only make more money and move up higher in the world of IT as time went on. Indeed, by the end of 2000, I was also installing CCD security cameras, and networking them together... with most of that work being in Chicago itself!
I tried mightily, during 2000, to win Kate back. Her only problem with me had been that I'd run out of money and moved back with my parents, but now?... I was back on top, baby!.. with more money and a bigger apartment than ever!.. and a FUTURE!
But over the same time period that I'd been finding my way into this new job, Kate had been doing some soul searching of her own, and decided to join the National Guard.
By the time we were talking on the phone again, in late 2000, she was just on the verge of signing the papers.
I tried like hell to talk her out of it. I told her the national guard talks a good game, saying it's just a couple weekends of laser tag and free college, but... if there's a war, you'll have to go fight it!
She said she'd talked to an old guy she worked with, who was really smart, and he'd assured her, America was not gonna be getting into any kind of war in the next three years.
I failed to talk Kate out of signing the papers, and, though we did go on one date in January of 2001... she'd already joined up and would be starting boot camp at the end of March.
Early 2001 was a bit depressing, but... I did have a good job and everything so, I took to the Yahoo Personals, hoping to find somebody new.
When I first met Patti online, I thought the age gap was a bit too wide, and she was a bit too straight laced... neither drinking, nor smoking. But we did get along, and she had a hilarious sense of humor, so we agreed to just be friends.
I was very serious about that. I was not trying to groom some younger woman, but we had both been through recent heart breaks and both had the same sense of humor, so she was a welcome companion online to instant message with.
Looking back, it's obvious that Patti... who was 21 at the time, was a typical Millenial. But there was no stereotypes about Millenials yet.
Still, she was very introverted, but also chronically online. She wrote fan fiction. She ran message boards full of fans... for very Millenial things like the Backstreet Boys, and the Simpsons.
She would later go on to get super into Harry Potter, and American Idol.
But at any rate, we just kind of gravitated into a relationship. We were too friendly for too long online, and by March of 2001... we were dating!
In terms of girlfriend character types, Patti was the comedian girlfriend.
I'd dated the girl next door, the wiccan, the vegetarian, and the bad ass party girl, but Patti was the comedian.
But, hilarious as she was, Patti wanted to settle down... ASAP! The talk of marriage, home ownership, and babies, came very early, and was discussed often.
I figured, at age 31, it was probably time to settle down. I was only gonna be advancing in the IT world. Patty was hilarioius. Why not?
She had a little dog at home, whom she loved, but Patti's mother wanted to give it away, because it peed on the floor all the time. And Patti, heartbroken over losing the dog, wanted me to adopt it, and keep it in my Naperville flat.
I was NOT about to do that! But I felt for her, so I looked for a compromise.
One of my brothers in Aurora had kittens to give away, so... the compromise was that I would adopt a kitten.
Patti had no experience with cats, but... recognized that I was trying, and agreed to settle for a kitten.
I wound up adopting two little black kittens in March of 2001... hoping they would keep each other company while I was out in Chicago all day long installing DSL. And I named them, Jet and Mauli.
Through April, May, and June of 2001, things were going well.
Jet and Mauli were adorable. Patti got along with them well enough, and stayed with me every weekend. And thorugh the weeks, I went out and worked my lucrative job as an install tech in the big city.
But in June... something was happening in the tech industry. Stocks in big internet start ups were beginning to flag a bit.
I used to listen to NPR on the radio all day, driving around in the city and commuting back home in the evening. The tech industry was not doing well, but they kept saying it was just a hiccup, and would not affect the service sector, which I was part of.
Prior to this, there had been a huge bubble... which had begun around 1998, where IT startups in every sector were just soaring sky high.
But by July of 2001... they were calling it, The Dot.Com Bust, and it WAS hitting every sector of the industry... including my own company, an outfit called, Texolutions.
Work dried up completely for us techs in July of 2001, but Texolutions continued to pay us for 40 hours a week, without flinching... until finally... in August, the game was up. Texolutions filed for bankruptcy, and all of us found ourselves in the unemployment office.
Congress had passed an extension to unemployment benefits around this time, because of the big bust. So... not only was this the only time in my life I qualified for unemployment, but... it would carry me through until June of 2002.
Monday, August 11th, 2001, was my first day on unemployment.
I decided to give myself a break and take it easy for one month.
I would get back on the horse and look for work, come Monday, September 10th, 2001.
I did manage to find a little web design work to supplement my income. Under the terms of the unemployment, I was allowed to make up to half what the benefit payment was, and still stay on the dole.
Patti and I weren't worried too much, as September began.
Surely I'd find something soon.
On Monday, September 10th, as promised, I began sending out resume's on Monster.Com, and then went to my parent's house to do my laundry that night.
On Tuesday, September 11th... well you know what happened that morning.
After September 11th, Patti was a lot more worried about everything. When the planes began to fly again, she was freaked out by every passing plane.
She wasn't as confident we'd just bounce back from everything, and neither was I, because the Dot.Com Bust had been one thing, but this attack had now been a further complication to the economy and the job market.
Maybe I wasn't gonna pick up where I left off making twenty bucks an hour in a few months!
The whole idea of getting married, buying a house, and having a baby started to look a LOT sketchier than it had in the spring!
And on top of all that... in the back of my head I knew... Kate was still out there in Basic Training!
Kate had started basic training in April of 2001! She wasn't getting out until December!
But NOW... President Bush was already forming a coalition to send troops into Afghanistan!.. and people already knew he had Iraq in his sights as a possible second front!
I couldn't get it out of my head, Kate telling me the previous winter, that some old fart she worked with assured her we weren't going to war in the next three years!
GODDAMMIT!
It took 9/11 to make me realize that I was not over Kate, and that this whole relationship with Patti was a rebound... because of how worried sick I became for Kate going to war!
- 2001: Patti and I broke up in December.
- 2002: Kate and I did have a second fling from January through May, but then she left for JRTC, and was put on notice of an impending deployment afterward, and ghosted me.
My unemployment ran out but I found a job as an apartment maintenance mechanic in Aurora, and moved into a smaller apartment on one of their properties in Aurora with Jet and Mauli.
Patti and I started dating again in September. - 2003: Patti moved in with me and Jet and Mauli in March. A week later the war in Iraq was declared, and I found out Kate had been deployed to that front. Just tried to pretend it wasn't happening and make life work with Patti, but I was only making $9.00 per hour, and she was only making $12.00 per hour, so... money was tight.
- 2004: Same as above, but we adopted a third cat... a prussian blue kitten Patti named Wylie.
- 2005: Same as above, but Patti was really putting on the pressure for us to buy a house and have babies, even though money was tight. I adopted a fourth kitten, who had found me on the property while working. An orange tabby, Patti named Eli.
- 2006: Same as above, but now the housing bubble was inflating out of control, and we had four cats, and weren't making any better money, and I was drinking too much, because I was secretly so fearful for Kate, and sick of my job and hated my life.
I quit my job, cashed out my meager 401K, coasted for a few months, and then Patti's dad got me a job as a janitor for an offsite of a hospital up in Elgin, for $17.00 per hour... which was great, but it was second shift, which Patti didn't like.
So we had tons of arguments about my new job schedule and buying a house at the peak of a bubble, and... it was very dark and sad and I had a breakdown, which sent Patti packing back to her parent's house, leaving me with the four cats, but I recovered from my breakdown after a couple days and held on to my janitor job
In early 2007, my life started over completely.
I was single again, holding down a small flat in Aurora, with four cats, but commuting to Elgin every day for a Janitor gig that finally paid a double digit wage.
It was awkward at first, working for Patti's Dad, after we'd broken up, and it wasn't easy for me to make ends meet with just my single income... and give the four cats all the attention they needed... but I managed to get by, and after a few months, Patti's Dad moved on to a new hospital and my new boss was some rando who didn't know me at all.
In 2008, that rando boss also left, and the entire housekeeping department came under the perview of a guy named Ray, who headed up the engineering department. And when he got wind that I had four years experience doing apartment maintenance, Ray began talking to me about moving up to Engineering.
I said I'd think about it.
Kate and I began to talk again on the phone. She'd been in Iraq through all of 2003 and most of 2004, but was home by 2005, and out of the National Guard completely by 2006.
She came to visit at my new flat in the fall of 2008, four or five times.
We smoked, drank, and had fun, but... neither of us was ready to get too close.
She had PTSD from the warfront, and I was still kind of a mess after my own, comparatively silly hardships.
We decided to just be friends.
In 2009, as Kate moved to Wisconsin to live with a new boyfriend she'd met online, I got word from Ray that the offsite I was mopping floors in, was gonna be phased out.
In November of 2009, I was hired into the engineering department and moved over to the main hospital.
2010 was a difficult year, emotionally.
I figured that I might find a new girlfriend at the main hospital, but I was also turning 41, so... I had an expiration date on my balding forehead, and though I did almost spark something up with three different women that year, and a fourth living in my courtyard... all of them fizzled out before there could even be a first date.
Also, Eli left one day in June of 2010, and never returned.
And then in September of 2010, Wylie, who was only seven years old, died of congestive heart failure.
So by fall of 2010, it was just me, and Jet & Mauli... and I began to realize, there wasn't gonna be a sixth girlfriend.
Never in one year, before or after 2010, did I spend so much time, just sitting on my front stoop... feeling my heart wrench for this or that reason.
But I did still have Jet & Mauli, and my flat, and my good job that I loved. So, I eventually got over it.
Through 2011, 2012, and 2013, I just vibed along with life.
Things were easier with just my two original cats.
Life was easier with no woman around, and no idea that one would ever again materialize.
I fixed up the flat... painted and redecorated. I got my teeth fixed up and got glasses. Traded in one car for another car. I was making YouTube videos... having fun.
I finally graduated back to first shift, after six years on second shift, and everybody on first shift loved me at work... and I was just this guy in his forties, with two cats, doing everything right!
But my Mom fell ill in the spring of 2014.
She and Dad had been living a couple miles away for all these years, and I'd visited them regularly and talked to Mom on the phone every week. I'd done their repairs for them for free, and we'd gone out to eat on the holidays.
But in 2014, what started as a short stay in the hospital for Mom, proved to be the start of an ongoing health problem that kept coming back and getting worse all year.
By August, she'd gone to a rehab center for three weeks, and I knew it was time for me to move back home.
I flipped the upstairs at home in August, and moved back in, with Jet and Mauli, on September 1st, at which point Mom had been released from rehab and was thought to be out of the woods.
But a week later, she was back in the hospital, sicker than ever, and wound up in another rehab center, where she stayed... the rest of 2014, and into 2015.
And she died on February 16th of 2015.
2015, then, began a new era, in which it was me and Dad, here at the old family house, with Jet and Mauli, now getting old themselves, upstairs with me.
I had a lot more disposeable cash, now that I was back at home, and I was also now making more money than ever before. I'd finally passed that $20.00 and hour mark again, that I had not seen since 2000.
Through 2015, 2016, and 2017, I continued to get more raises at work... paid off the car I'd bought in 2013... bought all kinds of furniture, clothes, and appliances for both myself and Dad... and took care of my aging kitties.
In 2018, I went back to 2nd shift. It was an instant dollar an hour raise, and I found I just liked it better than day shift, after having done day shift for five whole years.
I was making bank. Dad was still healthy as a horse. I had a great new phone that could record in stereo.
I decided to start recording crickets and thunderstorms again... just as I had done waaaaay back in 1994.
In 2019, I started landscaping the yard, and also investing heavily in creating a workshop down in the cellar to deal with looming maintenance issues around the house.
2019 was the absolute pinacle of me, loving my job, owning every problem at home with my wealth, and seizing the opportunity to just... transform the whole property and look ahead toward the far future, when I'd own this house, and completely renovate it.
But... 2019 was the year we had a hostile corporate takeover at work, and my boss was fired... and his boss... and his boss... and the president of the hospital... and her VP in charge of facilities... and six of my coworkers.
And they came in like Nazi's and clamped down on everything, ruling through fear.
And Dad was diagnosed with bladder cancer... and spent tons of time either in the hospital, or getting procedures done and recoving at home.
And Jet died!
And holy fuck!
By early 2020, Dad had survived his bladder Cancer. They'd caught it early and nipped it in the bud. He was back to 100%, driving his car, and living his life.
But at work, the few work friends I had left, who'd survived the 2019 firings, were now leaving to work for other, less Nazi companies.
Just as covid hit, in March of 2020, I found myself all alone, without any friends or allies, in a hospital that had already become a hostile working environment... but now became a lot darker, as we were all branded essential workers... everybody in the building wearing masks and gloves, with plastic visors, as every inch of the building got sheilded with plexiglass, and all the visitors were expelled.
It became a dystopian nightmare.
I still managed to hang on and finish up my cellar workshop that spring, installing a sink and an exhaust fan down there, and using a stimulus check to buy a meiter saw, as I invested my own money in more power tools.
One night in June I came home and found Mauli dead on the floor.
She'd seemed fine before I'd left... hopping up on the table to eat her food like normal... but she was 19... and she apparently just... kicked the bucket without warning, while I'd been at work.
Despite all the fear of covid in 2020, neither Dad nor I ever got it. And in fact, Dad never once went to the ER or the clinic for anything the whole year.
I also managed to hang on to my job through all of 2020, investing every spare penny into my basement shop.
But then, in January of 2021... after I'd willingly covered Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years... and was looking forward to taking a couple weeks off, finally, for my own holiday... they came for me.
The rats had ratted me out for smoking on the roof, and my new rat boss, who'd been angling to get rid of me through all of 2020 had me where he wanted me. I was facing three months of probation, during which, if I so much as uttered a curse word, I could be terminated.
A polar vortex was on the way, and I was scheduled to do grounds outside, at night, thorugh February... without smoking... or uttering a curse word... and he was ready to pile a bunch of other nasty bullshit on my shoulders too.
So of course I resigned.
One of my brothers likes to joke that I started the Great Resignation... because that became a thing in the headlines a month later.
Having worked for the hospital 13 years, I'd saved up 30K+ dollars in my 401K, which I cashed out immediately.
At home, deep cleaning the flat upstairs in late January, with no cats... with no job... dusting off all the little knick knacks and keepsakes I'd accumulated through my twenties... and thirties... and forties... through five girlfriends, and so many jobs, and so many cars, and so many presidents...
...I shrugged and thought, I have bounced back before.
I made such good use of that 30K, through 2021... it was insane how well I managed that money, considering it was less than I'd been making per year, previous to that.
I landscaped the yard. I built a shed. I trenched in flex drains from the gutters. I built a gate for the dog yard. I repaired the porch enclosure and repainted the side porch. I fixed doors. I repaired the foundation. I ran new electrical, and heated pipes in the crawl space that had been prone to freezing.
I repaired steps, and draft proofed the whole house... to the point where we began saving 15% on our energy bills.
I bought a lawn mower!
And I slept in!.. and I puttered around the house for a year in jeans and loafers!.. and by year's end, I still had enough money left to make it through the winter.
2021 was, in many ways, my perfect year! It was all vacation. It was all paid for. And I accomplished all my goals.
And that brings us to 2022.
The first half of this year was pretty sketchy.
I had this plan to go into business for myself as a handyman. I had all the tools, and I had the cellar workshop. All the work on the house was done, so I was free to persue this new adventure. And I even managed to trade in my little commuter car Yaris for a RAV4 van with a roof rack, that was better for the handyman gig.
In a different year, this plan may have worked. But Putin started a war in Ukraine in February, which drove gas prices up to five bucks a gallon, at the same time that supply chain issues, resulting from the aftermath of the pandemic, lead to inflation at the grocery store, and empty shelves, as people began hoarding goods.
And that is not the type of economic environment in which folks are looking to hire the freelance handyman!
Rather, it's the economic environment where everybody is saying, We can live with this leaky faucet and sticky door another year! We can suffer all these other maintenance issues another year!
And you know the story from there.
I skated by on fumes for a couple months... getting really hermitty... and existential... and then Snoop & Prowly came along... which forced me to actually look for a job and land the one I'm starting tomorrow.
Part time... just as I did in 1994... getting back into the swing of reality after over a year of unemployment that time around.
But, Janitor, with a bigger corporation... like I did with the hospital in 2007, that allowed me to work my way up over the years.
Two identical twin cats... like I did in 2000... who will hopefully be with me for 18 or 19 years.
And I've still got Dad in the land of the living, for the moment!
That's my unnecessary Biography... and tomorrow, we rock & roll!
°¦}
