If I didn't know better, I'd have to say things looked kind of bad for me. The boat blew up an entire engine in December, and I thought Kirk was going to cry as he broke the news. It was a solemn, contemplative day, like the loss of a loved one. Nobody, least of all me, could say if the boat would ever be fixed, or what the next step was. I eventually had it towed, pulled up, engine-swapped, and made seaworthy again (for a nominal fee just north of 6 grand). While I was at it, I went to great pains to legally register and tag the trailer, and add a ball hitch to the Honda Element. Crisis resolved? In February, it broke down again, and it is back in the hands of the marina (thanks TowBoatUS). But what we do know, is that it has a brand new engine, new prop, and a bottom job. It's likely to yield a summer of fun, if the winter would ever give way.
In the depths of December's crisis, I also managed to suffer a complete failure of my iPhone 3GS, as well as the clothes washer and clothes dryer. Colby (the orange cat) got a terrible bladder infection and nearly died, in an expensive predicament now referred to as The Incident. Repair bills from the condo in Orlando meant I wasn't getting full rent checks, or in the case of February, any rent checks. Meanwhile, drastically cutting 1099 work in 2009 meant that in 2010 I now faced the large annual tax bill amidst decreased means to pay it. It was something to worry about as the dermatologist used liquid nitrogen to freeze painful precancerous cells off of my forehead. When it rains, it pours.
Eventually, I got through February by simply putting my fingers in my ears and waiting for the next bomb to go off, and not being very surprised when it did. But it is dismissive to say I've had bad times.
I passed my first college class, College Algebra. I got halfway through English Composition I and continue making fine progress to this day. My weight of 195 pounds was reduced all over again to 169, and it continues to drop, because I've adopted a pescetarian, 1300-calorie-per-day diet and I either run 3+ miles, or bicycle 7+ miles, every day, depending on the weather. The financial setbacks (all the difficulty of the past few months boils down to just that, an enormous financial setback), while certainly not negligible, are going to pass, and when they do, my expenses will be low enough that I can hold just about any steady job and still pay all the bills (April's huge tax bill will be the last of these annual headaches that I have suffered since 2004). And Colby has been much closer to me since The Incident. The main reason for all this personal progress in the depths of disaster, is simply that I was always too bone-headed to give up on the idea of a halfway-pleasant someday. And would you look at that, some interpretations of the events could even lead one to say I've benefitted from the hardship. My golden handcuffs may one day self-destruct, but damn if I won't be educated and in shape, with a new closer relationship with Colby.
Work has also gone in new directions, as I send ISO-8583 payment messages directly to major cardbrands, and create pretty Cocoa-like web user interfaces with Cappuccino. I'm even baking bread from scratch again (which 2 or 3 of you may remember was the original raison d'etre for belgo.com's predecessor blog, belgo.org). I haven't been in Key West wasting money on booze, but I have been in Big Pine Key and Little Duck Key walking beaches in solitude and figuring out how to save money on groceries. I haven't been driving every day, but I have been bicycling new trails on several Keys, and those trails have taught me about hidden places and forgotten history unknown even to die-hard locals.
The Man, the cruel universe, whatever you want to call it, can and will extract all the dough from me that it possibly can. But I admit no defeat whatsoever, until the flame of discovery is extinguished completely. And right now, the wind only seems to be fanning the flames. Maybe I was overdue for some flame-fanning.
-Chris