Work Keeps Going / Closed eBay Store / Sudden Home Problems / EOU 20th Grad Anniversary
The good news I was hoping to have this month about my job didn't materialize in June. There was one job posting but it was for a project management position that I'm not terribly interested in but with the manager guy on PTO, I can't ask for details. I'll learn more in July but it sucks. I was really hoping for something to get me out of my current situation. At least I have the first week of July off. The company has these built-in "shutdown" weeks when things are slow so it'll be an opportunity for Nicole and me to catch up on housework and whatnot. Nicole's parents were supposed to come for a visit this week but they got sick right before they were to leave, so we're rescheduling. That's a tad disappointing but what can you do?
Ten years ago when the relationship Nicole and I were building was really getting going, we were starting to mix finances and she caught the eBay sales bug. I'd been selling things on eBay for some extra scratch since the '90s and she wanted in on it. I had a pretty good process and satisfied customers, so I taught her everything I knew. She went and ran with it and in the years that followed, she built an empire and made it her full time day job. At the height of it between 2015 and 2018, she had hundreds of sales and totaled above $20,000 for the year. It doesn't sound like much, but we lived very frugally in cheap apartments so it was a nice jolt at the time. But as the years went on, the market changed and finding things to resell got harder and harder versus just living our lives. I had always wanted to quit the rat race and join Nicole in thrifting for our income but it just wasn't enough and the time required to hope to find valuable items second-hand was killing her. Especially during the pandemic; it just wasn't sustainable. Now that we have Scarlett, there's simply no time for eBay foolishness so with all that combined, we closed our store subscription in June. I'll still continue to sell the odd knick-knack here and there on eBay but the days of maintaining 600+ listings are over. We've been in the process of purging the whole store to get it down to less than 50 listings that we know will eventually sell. It's kind of a disappointment in that for a time I was really hoping that would be my future fall-back career. Ohh well.
All the sudden, there've been a few odd problems with the house. It's kind of funny, really. We discovered that there's a rat floating around the yard but we have yet to catch him. One of the sprinkler system sprinkler heads sprung a leak underground and I had to spend an afternoon digging it up and replacing the line. We found out that the radiant heat system in the living room is broken beyond repair and that the previous owners knew this and cut the lines in the wall so that future owners (me) could never hope to fix it anyway. Then, we had a water leak under the house which I had to--for the first time--get into the crawlspace and cut a copper pipe to replace a section of it. That was crazy but I did it. It's just kind of funny how these mild little disasters come in waves like that. I'm very thankful that this house is rather easy to work with and I know Nicole is happy that I'm a handy guy. I hope Scarlett learns some of these things as she grows up so she can be knowledgable in taking care of things too. I think that would be a valuable skill for anyone. But yea, when it all comes down to it, it's really just overcoming a fear of spiders.
So June was the 20th anniversary of my graduating college at EOU. I can not believe twenty years have flown by. I guess it's time to reflect on how things have gone. If you would have asked me back then where I see myself in twenty years, I think I would have said just having a career and an outlook on the future would be my definition of success. I've got so much more than that today as luck would have it: A loving wife, a darling daughter, the responsibility of home ownership, and a stable family life are also all part of that. I've often wondered if I've really applied my degree in my life or if it's truly helped me get ahead or even if EOU was the right college for me. In the end, I typically acknowledge that those four years were a lot of fun and I had some great times with great people in a great environment. A lot of how I learned to be an independent person came from my time there and although I may have made some ultimately unhelpful decisions about career path or even the choice of the college itself, the experience was something I'll have with me forever. I sometimes have reoccurring dreams where I'm back in Dorian Hall (Which was leveled to the ground before 2010) and even though it's distressing to dream about school, there's a comfort in it. Life was different back then. I think I'll always miss it.
Ten years ago when the relationship Nicole and I were building was really getting going, we were starting to mix finances and she caught the eBay sales bug. I'd been selling things on eBay for some extra scratch since the '90s and she wanted in on it. I had a pretty good process and satisfied customers, so I taught her everything I knew. She went and ran with it and in the years that followed, she built an empire and made it her full time day job. At the height of it between 2015 and 2018, she had hundreds of sales and totaled above $20,000 for the year. It doesn't sound like much, but we lived very frugally in cheap apartments so it was a nice jolt at the time. But as the years went on, the market changed and finding things to resell got harder and harder versus just living our lives. I had always wanted to quit the rat race and join Nicole in thrifting for our income but it just wasn't enough and the time required to hope to find valuable items second-hand was killing her. Especially during the pandemic; it just wasn't sustainable. Now that we have Scarlett, there's simply no time for eBay foolishness so with all that combined, we closed our store subscription in June. I'll still continue to sell the odd knick-knack here and there on eBay but the days of maintaining 600+ listings are over. We've been in the process of purging the whole store to get it down to less than 50 listings that we know will eventually sell. It's kind of a disappointment in that for a time I was really hoping that would be my future fall-back career. Ohh well.
All the sudden, there've been a few odd problems with the house. It's kind of funny, really. We discovered that there's a rat floating around the yard but we have yet to catch him. One of the sprinkler system sprinkler heads sprung a leak underground and I had to spend an afternoon digging it up and replacing the line. We found out that the radiant heat system in the living room is broken beyond repair and that the previous owners knew this and cut the lines in the wall so that future owners (me) could never hope to fix it anyway. Then, we had a water leak under the house which I had to--for the first time--get into the crawlspace and cut a copper pipe to replace a section of it. That was crazy but I did it. It's just kind of funny how these mild little disasters come in waves like that. I'm very thankful that this house is rather easy to work with and I know Nicole is happy that I'm a handy guy. I hope Scarlett learns some of these things as she grows up so she can be knowledgable in taking care of things too. I think that would be a valuable skill for anyone. But yea, when it all comes down to it, it's really just overcoming a fear of spiders.
So June was the 20th anniversary of my graduating college at EOU. I can not believe twenty years have flown by. I guess it's time to reflect on how things have gone. If you would have asked me back then where I see myself in twenty years, I think I would have said just having a career and an outlook on the future would be my definition of success. I've got so much more than that today as luck would have it: A loving wife, a darling daughter, the responsibility of home ownership, and a stable family life are also all part of that. I've often wondered if I've really applied my degree in my life or if it's truly helped me get ahead or even if EOU was the right college for me. In the end, I typically acknowledge that those four years were a lot of fun and I had some great times with great people in a great environment. A lot of how I learned to be an independent person came from my time there and although I may have made some ultimately unhelpful decisions about career path or even the choice of the college itself, the experience was something I'll have with me forever. I sometimes have reoccurring dreams where I'm back in Dorian Hall (Which was leveled to the ground before 2010) and even though it's distressing to dream about school, there's a comfort in it. Life was different back then. I think I'll always miss it.