Well, maybe this is the year I figure out the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything.
Now Arriving At Your Destination
So, last Friday around 5 PM we pulled into The Lakes at Deerfield Beach, an apartment complex here in Florida. Weary, exhausted, we went inside and signed some papers and handed over a huge wad of cash…and became the proud renters of a beautiful new apartment.
Then we just had to get all the stuff inside. We had called ahead and hired some movers but we’d told them that we would be there at 1 PM and we were really, really late.
But they were still there and they moved us in. I tipped them big; it was a lifesaver.
Then it was a matter of juggling finances (and ending up having to borrow some money) so we made our March rent on time. Then it was just time to wait until I started working.
And yesterday I went to my new job for the first time. Everyone there seems very nice, the corporate culture seems laid back (and I need that after General Motors, honestly). The work looks like something I can do.
Here’s a thing though…I hadn’t slept much the night before (I do have an anxiety disorder, after all). So by lunch I was dragging.
So I had a Coke.
(gasps from the audience)
Yes, I deliberately drank caffeine for the first time in over four years. Other than the small amounts of caffeine in chocolate, I had not consumed any since my heart problems started in October of 2008.
Now, I had already asked my doctor years ago, and he had said that a caffeinated soda a day wouldn’t hurt me. In fact, a doctor once put me on modafinil, a much strong stimulant than caffeine! (I didn’t realize what it was at the time.) But I was afraid to do it until today. Today, I felt like it was necessary for me to be at my best.
And the worst part was, it worked. I felt great! I got lots of stuff done. I felt like things might be okay now.
I was kind of half-hoping that it wouldn’t work, so I could tell myself, hey, I tried it, it doesn’t work, no need to be tempted any more. But it did.
I guess programmers really are machines that turn caffeine into code. So I guess I’ll be having a (single) soda each day to fuel that.
I just have to be careful. Now, there is still no clinical research showing that stimulants cause heart attacks, but when you tell the paramedics that you drink a lot of caffeine and are taking pseudophedrine and they look at each other knowingly, that’s evidence enough for me.
Wow, this got off course. The upshot is, we’re here and it looks like we’re staying. My first-day jitters are over and it looks like, for a while at least, I’m going to be working for a living and we’ll be getting back to what normal people consider normal.
Thank you to all my friends and family who helped us. It really does feel like waking from a nightmare.
Travellin’ Family Circus
Today is moving day. We spent all last week finding a place and late Friday we finally got one to accept us. We finalized the deal yesterday and since we wanted the earliest move-in possible (for obvious reasons) we need to be there on Friday.
That means we are leaving today. The big stuff is packed but there’s lots of loose little stuff (like there always is). Fortunately the movers don’t get here until 10:30.
Then it’s off to begin a twenty-hour-long trip to Flowida, baybee!
At Last
This must be what it feels like to make parole.
This evening, I found out that I passed my background check and I will be starting work at Pace America, in Boca Raton, Florida, on March 4th…two days before my birthday 🙂
We got a bit of money from our tax return and hopefully it will be enough to get us down there. If anyone knows any good & cheap apartment complexes near Boca Raton, please let us know!
A New Possibility
Remember that interview I went on a few weeks ago, to Florida? You know, the one I was sure I bombed?
Well, they called back and made me an offer.
This…should be Happy Times, but it’s not yet. For one thing, it took them about a week to actually get me the offer letter, which I sent back last week. Now they are running a background check on me, and presumably, if I pass, they’ll finish the hire. I don’t even know what my start date might be yet.
I wanted to wait until I knew for sure before saying anything, but at this point it could be another week before I know for certain that the hire will go through.
Of course, even if this does go through we still have the problem of getting down to Florida. We’re hoping that our tax return might help out a bit with regards to that; we’ll see.
Still, it’s a possibility. One that would not only get me working again, but would get us out of Detroit.
Wish us luck.
Cats and Christmas Trees Do Not Go Together
Or rather, they do, and that’s the problem.
Ain’t Goin’ Down Like This
I find myself wanting to write, but I hate writing about bad things and lately, that’s all that’s been happening.
So let’s embrace it.
I was laid off from General Motors in February of 2012. That means that as of this writing, I have been unemployed for ten months. During that time, we’ve lived off our savings and our unemployment insurance. When the savings ran out, we had to move to a much cheaper neighborhood in order to make ends meet.
And by “much cheaper” I mean “it’s a dump and we hear gunshots go off all the time”. How bad is it? Here’s the house next door.
And here’s one just down the street.
During my time unemployed I’ve had at least fifteen in-person interviews and probably twice as many phone interviews, none of which have panned out. The unemployment rate here in Detroit is a whopping eighteen percent, which means that about one in five people looking for a job can’t find one. Employers can afford to be incredibly picky, rejecting candidates if they are missing any skills required for the position because they know another one will come along.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, software development is apparently no longer a job you can bootstrap into. Despite over ten years of experience with a wide variety of platforms, operating systems and languages, I have been told several times that I cannot be considered for employment because I do not have a bachelor’s degree in computer science. This did not used to be the case.
Even so, at some point it’s hard not to wonder if I accidentally killed someone’s dog and got blacklisted. My favorite interviews are the ones that seem to go well, only to have them come back and say they hired someone else for the job. And for legal reasons, they will never tell you why they didn’t hire you. Which means you’ve got no feedback on your interviewing performance and thus no real way to improve, other than to write more practice code and memorize more C++ trivia questions. (I can recite the four uses of the static keyword in my sleep now.)
Being unemployed long-term is one of the worst non-injurious things that can happen to you. It saps your spirit. It makes you doubt yourself. It makes you feel like a failure for not being able to provide for your family. And it’s even worse if, like me, you are prone to anxiety and depression. I know this is going to sound horribly lame, but at this point a lot of times the first response my brain has to an idea is “Why bother?”
I should update my blog. Really? Why bother? You don’t get paid for it.
I should finish Let’s Play Starflight. Really? Why bother? You don’t get paid for it.
I should work on Planitia. Really? Why bother? There’s a chance you’ll get paid, but it’s really low and it’ll take months of work.
I recently was approached by a publisher to write a book. I would frickin’ love to write a book. They came to me because they had read my blog. But the advance was tiny (I don’t blame them, I would have been a first-time author). In comparison to the amount of work required – twenty weeks of part-time work – it didn’t seem like a good economical use of my time. So I turned it down.
The only really good thing that is going to come out of this is that when it passes my anxiety problems may lessen. If I can survive being unemployed for a year, I really should be able to survive anything.
This Only Works Because She’s Seven
Me: “It’s your birthday in a few days, I can’t wait to give you your present!”
Younger Daughter: “What is it what is it what is it?!”
Me: “It’s a secret!”
YD: “Aw. I want mommy to get me my present; I like mommy’s presents better.”
Me: “Well, mommy is getting you one too…but I can’t wait for you to see mine.”
YD: “Well, I bet I’ll like mommy’s better.”
Me: “We’ll see. What are you doing?”
YD: “Watching Minecraft videos. I love them! I just wish we had the real game.”
Evocation
I love music. I don’t think I’m unique in this regard. But I will seize upon a song and listen to it over and over, memorizing the lyrics and singing it myself. As a result, certain songs remind me strongly of what I was going through in my life when I was listening to them.
Listening to “Sledgehammer” by Peter Gabriel evokes sitting in high school, wishing desperately that I could kick the habit and shed my skin.
Listening to “The Boys of Summer” and other songs from Building the Perfect Beast evokes driving to and attending Macon Community College.
Listening to “Beyond the Silver Rainbow” by Genesis evokes walking the streets of Austin, looking for a job.
Listening to “The Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota” by Weird Al Yankovic evokes working at Origin, testing the PlayStation and Saturn versions of Crusader: No Remorse.
Listening to Body Count evokes that time I lived in a crack house. (I don’t willingly listen to Body Count any more.)
Yesterday, while I was shopping, “The Game of Love” by Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders came on the overhead speakers and I was instantly transported.
Back when I was in high school, I didn’t have a computer. This was like not having oxygen. I played and programmed the computers at school and we had a family computer (a Tandy 1000, actually a pretty good machine), but I had no machine of my own and my time on the Tandy was always extremely limited.
But I had (and still have) a friend named Dennis Borders. He was one of a clique of young men at our high school that all had Commodore 64s. They would get together to play and trade games (ie, pirate them). They were constantly bringing game materials to school, which I would devour ravenously. I read the manual for Ultima III months before I actually got to play the game; the world the manual described enraptured me and it pained me that I couldn’t visit it right away.
And every once in a while, every 4-5 months or so, after months of me pleading and begging, my mother would let me stay overnight at Dennis’ house.
Forty-eight hours of pure, unadulterated computer gaming. It was heaven. I refused to sleep. We played Ultima III, Ultima IV, Ghostbusters, Gauntlet, Ghosts ‘n Goblins, Hardball, Impossible Mission, Moebius, Winter Games, Summer Games, Questron, Questron II, Legacy of the Ancients, Uridium. We would also play some paper-and-pencil Dungeons & Dragons, which was wonderfully illicit, because my mother hates role-playing games; she thinks they are Satanic.
(Yes, that’s right, the two things I loved most in high school – RPGs and computers – my mother despised. We didn’t get along very well.)
In the late 80’s, a movie called Good Morning Vietnam came out. It was a good movie, but the real star was the soundtrack. Dennis made a mix tape for my sister (who he was sweet on at the time) that had “Game of Love” on it, and we listened to it like crazy.
So for a moment, I was transported back to Dennis’ house. For a moment, I was at his house, joystick in hand, staring at his TV, finally, finally happy.
It was pretty awesome.
Compare
Thought I’d mentioned this earlier, but I guess I didn’t.
In the picture below, the top is the model villager the inimitable Alexis Bogue made for my game Planitia.
The bottom is a picture of my son David.
No, she hadn’t seen David when she made the model.
