My Life Over the Last Six Months (A Promised Explanation)
Lots of people (particularly folks on Twitter) have been subjected to my somewhat frequent bouts of despair and depression over the last several months, and more than a few attempts at me needing to beg for help on a financial level. Now that it's November, there are still a lot of people who don't even know what's going on, what's caused me to be this upset, and I think it's time that I finally just laid it out so that I can clear the air. Nobody likes it when someone's complaining about their lot in life and won't say what's wrong.
I'll start with the big doozy...
Back in early May, I was pulled over for a broken tail light while leaving a bar and subsequently arrested for a DUI. I want to stress that it was just the tail light that got me pulled over--I didn't get into an accident, I wasn't swerving all over the road, and nobody got hurt--but hey, arrested is still arrested and I'm not trying to absolve myself of the responsibility there. Luckily, one of my very good friends came out to get me at the police station at 4 in the morning and took me home.
(Fig 1 - Life After Getting a DUI: http://i.imgur.com/eJoH4vw.gif )
The legal fallout from that night is still a daily presence in my life. I'm far from done dealing with all the fees, required programs, and other punishments that were thrown at me, and I'll be walking on eggshells for at least the next three years making sure I don't ever run into even the slightest bit of further trouble (which I hope will be easy enough, but you never know).
It's hard to really explain how this makes you feel. Humiliation is a big part of it. Almost overnight, it's like you become part of this undesirable element of society, and there isn't a way to change that. For the first several months that this was all going on, since it was an ongoing legal process, I couldn't talk about it with other people, and by the time it got to the point where that aspect had been resolved, I'd long since stopped wanting to talk about it. The whole thing had reduced me to this ball of frustration and anger and hopelessness and trust me, when you're in the thick of this, it's hard to see any end in sight.
(Fig 2 - My Attitude Toward the Universe: http://i.imgur.com/sEJcP6D.gif )
As a fun side effect, the DUI was what forced me to cancel my Guest of Honor appearance at Condition: Wasteland this past summer, which was kind of like the cherry on top of the suck sundae that my life had turned into at that point. The people who run that con had all been extremely nice to me, and to be forced to have to let them down like that was a lot to bear. (Really, I've canceled literally every single trip I had planned this year, but that was just really tough to have to do, and I'm mostly just glad they found a replacement at all.)
So, anyway, over the last few months while dealing with all of this (and it's a lot to deal with), my freelance work all but disappeared. It was unrelated to the DUI stuff, but seeing as I was already crushed under all that, losing my main source of income pretty much devastated the rest of. Aside from the fact that I've been hit with enormous costs because of said legal problems (over $5000 so far and counting), it's essentially like I've been unemployed, only without the benefit of being able to claim unemployment payments.
I started doing teaching to supplement my otherwise minimal income, and that was all right for a couple weeks, but quickly turned into a bust. I'm down to just two and a half students, and those aren't going to last much longer, because at that low volume there's no good financial incentive to keep putting time into it. For a while, it was good just because it gave me even a minor sense of purpose in my life, but I can live with the fact that I at least tried.
(Fig 3 - Abstract Representation of Me Trying to Make Progress: http://i.imgur.com/wDkaqfI.gif )
In the meantime, I finally found a nice, long (paying!) project to work on, but the downside is that it's not going to be paid for it until another month or two, and even then it's not going to be a lot of money right away. It's something to do, and more importantly, it's a foot in the door to other opportunities (potentially really huge ones), but in the meantime I have almost now incoming cash flow and no way to pay my rent or my bills, and that's a lot to have to deal with. (I can't just get a retail job or anything in the meantime because this current project is going to be a full-time thing and it has some pretty strict deadlines, and turning it down kills the only career-furthering lead I've had in over a year.)
Most days I'm fine. Most days I even feel pretty normal and I can laugh about things and poke fun at my situation. But every so often, the negatives just pile up and I can't handle things anymore. Every few weeks, it's like something else completely outside my control comes screaming along to undo all of my meager progress, then knocks me back further than when I started, and when that happens it's hard to keep up the incentive to try anymore. Thankfully, today is not one of those days.
(Fig 4 - Representation of How My Life Has Felt: http://i.imgur.com/Jhvex.gif )
I want to apologize to everyone I've upset over the last few months, either directly or indirectly. I know I've been alternately bitch and inconsolable and begging and despondent and other types of just plain unpleasant, and for folks who don't know me as well, I want to stress that that's very much not how I usually am. I apologize further for not telling people what's been wrong, either because I couldn't or because I couldn't bring myself to. That's a big part of why I'm saying all this here.
This has been kinda hard to write, I won't lie. But I feel like I owe it to people to come clean. That, and I think it's important that people know what's going on. For those of you who stuck with this this long, I offer you this: http://i.imgur.com/6clzhMa.gif
I'll start with the big doozy...
Back in early May, I was pulled over for a broken tail light while leaving a bar and subsequently arrested for a DUI. I want to stress that it was just the tail light that got me pulled over--I didn't get into an accident, I wasn't swerving all over the road, and nobody got hurt--but hey, arrested is still arrested and I'm not trying to absolve myself of the responsibility there. Luckily, one of my very good friends came out to get me at the police station at 4 in the morning and took me home.
(Fig 1 - Life After Getting a DUI: http://i.imgur.com/eJoH4vw.gif )
The legal fallout from that night is still a daily presence in my life. I'm far from done dealing with all the fees, required programs, and other punishments that were thrown at me, and I'll be walking on eggshells for at least the next three years making sure I don't ever run into even the slightest bit of further trouble (which I hope will be easy enough, but you never know).
It's hard to really explain how this makes you feel. Humiliation is a big part of it. Almost overnight, it's like you become part of this undesirable element of society, and there isn't a way to change that. For the first several months that this was all going on, since it was an ongoing legal process, I couldn't talk about it with other people, and by the time it got to the point where that aspect had been resolved, I'd long since stopped wanting to talk about it. The whole thing had reduced me to this ball of frustration and anger and hopelessness and trust me, when you're in the thick of this, it's hard to see any end in sight.
(Fig 2 - My Attitude Toward the Universe: http://i.imgur.com/sEJcP6D.gif )
As a fun side effect, the DUI was what forced me to cancel my Guest of Honor appearance at Condition: Wasteland this past summer, which was kind of like the cherry on top of the suck sundae that my life had turned into at that point. The people who run that con had all been extremely nice to me, and to be forced to have to let them down like that was a lot to bear. (Really, I've canceled literally every single trip I had planned this year, but that was just really tough to have to do, and I'm mostly just glad they found a replacement at all.)
So, anyway, over the last few months while dealing with all of this (and it's a lot to deal with), my freelance work all but disappeared. It was unrelated to the DUI stuff, but seeing as I was already crushed under all that, losing my main source of income pretty much devastated the rest of. Aside from the fact that I've been hit with enormous costs because of said legal problems (over $5000 so far and counting), it's essentially like I've been unemployed, only without the benefit of being able to claim unemployment payments.
I started doing teaching to supplement my otherwise minimal income, and that was all right for a couple weeks, but quickly turned into a bust. I'm down to just two and a half students, and those aren't going to last much longer, because at that low volume there's no good financial incentive to keep putting time into it. For a while, it was good just because it gave me even a minor sense of purpose in my life, but I can live with the fact that I at least tried.
(Fig 3 - Abstract Representation of Me Trying to Make Progress: http://i.imgur.com/wDkaqfI.gif )
In the meantime, I finally found a nice, long (paying!) project to work on, but the downside is that it's not going to be paid for it until another month or two, and even then it's not going to be a lot of money right away. It's something to do, and more importantly, it's a foot in the door to other opportunities (potentially really huge ones), but in the meantime I have almost now incoming cash flow and no way to pay my rent or my bills, and that's a lot to have to deal with. (I can't just get a retail job or anything in the meantime because this current project is going to be a full-time thing and it has some pretty strict deadlines, and turning it down kills the only career-furthering lead I've had in over a year.)
Most days I'm fine. Most days I even feel pretty normal and I can laugh about things and poke fun at my situation. But every so often, the negatives just pile up and I can't handle things anymore. Every few weeks, it's like something else completely outside my control comes screaming along to undo all of my meager progress, then knocks me back further than when I started, and when that happens it's hard to keep up the incentive to try anymore. Thankfully, today is not one of those days.
(Fig 4 - Representation of How My Life Has Felt: http://i.imgur.com/Jhvex.gif )
I want to apologize to everyone I've upset over the last few months, either directly or indirectly. I know I've been alternately bitch and inconsolable and begging and despondent and other types of just plain unpleasant, and for folks who don't know me as well, I want to stress that that's very much not how I usually am. I apologize further for not telling people what's been wrong, either because I couldn't or because I couldn't bring myself to. That's a big part of why I'm saying all this here.
This has been kinda hard to write, I won't lie. But I feel like I owe it to people to come clean. That, and I think it's important that people know what's going on. For those of you who stuck with this this long, I offer you this: http://i.imgur.com/6clzhMa.gif
