Runaway Train of Thought (Part One)

I hate dust.

Okay, maybe hate is a strong word for all types of dust - common household dust is annoying, but I don't harbor any major resentment to it, I suppose. Sawdust, on the other hand - yeah, I pretty much hate that right now. I've just spent the day cutting down ten bifold doors - bifold doors are largely constructed from MDF, or medium density fiberboard. MDF is made from mixing glue with...you guessed it...sawdust to make something resembling wood. So, when you cut it, you're basically making sawdust from sawdust - it's light, and fine, and goes absolutely everywhere but mostly in the direction of the person cutting it, so at the moment I'm covered in it, and I'm not happy.

I'm not happy. I haven't been happy much lately (and by lately I mean the last twenty years or so), but I've continued on the path laid out before me day by day nonetheless. Now, don't get me wrong - there have been spots of joy along the way. My wife, for example, who has stuck faithfully by my side and made the better part of those last twenty years bearable; my kids, who are a major source of happiness for me, and of course the friends that I have managed to hold onto throughout the years are valued possessions (except maybe for Fluffy, who as of late has had some major bug squarely lodged up his backside, but I love him anyway - the bug I wish would go, but Fluffy's still cool).

So not all bad - wife, family, friends - all good. That leaves me. What the hell am I doing? I mean really - is this where I'm supposed to be right now? Is this who I'm supposed to be right now? I got into this business because I'm good with my hands and I could make some money at it. I spent twelve years before that in a corporate job that I despised because I was good at what I did there and I could make some money at it. When I was a "struggling actor" in NYC, I waited tables because I could carry a tray and make some money at it. It's always come down to the money, and I've spent the better part of my life chasing that dollar so that I might have enough cash left over after the bills got paid to enjoy the other things in my life - my interests, my passions, and my dreams. I know; I'm not a special case. More than likely, the vast majority of us do the very same thing on a daily basis - put our dreams on a shelf as we run out the door to join the pursuit of the dollar, chanting our mantra with every breath we take - "gotta make the money, gotta make the money, gotta make the money..... "

So, here's my question - WHERE'S THE GOD DAMNED MONEY?????? I've done what I was supposed to do - what society tells me to do. I put my dreams on hold and have been the good little worker bee for-frigging-ever, and where has it gotten me? No where, mon frere. No matter how hard I work, no matter how hard I try, the finances only seem to get worse, while at the same time I see my life following much the same path as my father's, and he died at 62. What were his dreams for retirement? Damned if I know - he died before he could tell me. I do know that he worked like a dog until the disease got so bad that he just couldn't get out of bed, and I'll tell you - that had to be one major bad ass mother of a disease to keep my Dad from working - he was, and will always be, the hardest working man I've ever known. As hard as I work, I could never come close to him in that regard. I am not my Dad.

Okay, so I'm not my Dad - that much has been established. And, if I am not my Dad, perhaps I should step off of his path, seeing as it's not my path and also seeing as his path ends in early death - yeah, let's step off that bad boy right now. Okay, I guess that's a start. We're not gonna do what Dad did. So.....what are we gonna do? It's usually at this point that I start looking back through my magical lens of regret - "I should've gone to law school"...."I should've saved more money when I was younger"......"I coulda been a contender"....... Yeah, yeah - woulda, coulda, shoulda - all that noise just gets you down on yourself and never helps anyway unless you got a mad scientist friend with a DeLorean hanging around. If not, then the past is past, and regretting it won't help anything, so let's just shatter the magical lens of regret, shall we? Good. Excellent. We're making some headway here. Famous Amos started his cookie empire in the worst store on the worst corner of the worst neighborhood, and he made it work. He says, "Start from right where you are". So....where am I? Well, I'm standing beside a well worn path, with shards of broken magical lens all around me. Great, now I have sawdust and glass shards - let's throw in some roofing tar and I'll just have a crap filled trifecta. Oh yeah...and where's the money? I don't see any of that lying around, so I probably don't want to just stand here. No, that would be stagnation, and stagnation for most of us equals death. We're active beings - we need to get out there, move around, make things happen.

Get out there...hmmm....Houston, we may have found a clue. I don't get out anymore. I go from house to house, and sequester myself in there until the job is done. From my house to the job to the bank to my house. Lather, rinse, repeat. That ain't good. I've always considered myself somewhat of a lone wolf, but even the Debt Daddy needs the occasional human contact. Living in the city made that easier. I didn't drive to work - I walked. And in fifteen minutes, I probably saw more people on the street than I see here in a week. I miss the city, but when I go back there now, I feel more like a tourist than a former, card carrying resident. It almost feels sometimes like I left a part of myself there. I moved back here. I accepted normality. I accepted the suburbs. I did so because I wanted to raise a family, and family life is better here than there. But it was hard. Growing up in these same suburbs, I never really felt connected to it - square peg, meet round hole - I just didn't feel right in the 'burbs. At first I didn't feel right in the city either - it was scary, it was new, I didn't know all the rules - but eventually, we just clicked. In the city, I had no history - no one knew me there, so I could be anyone or anything that I wanted to be. If I tired of being that particular person, I could go across town and be someone else. I was empowered with an anonymity that gave me the ability to re-invent myself at will. Sadly, I didn't take advantage of that as much as I should have or perhaps could have because it wasn't long before the old mantra started dogging me again - "gotta make the money, gotta make the money, etc." The money train led me to an office, and the lure of more money kept me there for ten more years than I should have stayed. I had not re-invented myself - the need to pay my bills had done it for me. I had been molded into that which I swore I would never become - a corporate drone. Still, it paid better than waiting tables and I could still pursue my acting career - that was the rationale anyway. But money is like that piece of tail that you eventually leave your wife for - you start spending more and more time chasing it and, before you know it you've moved out of the house and the divorce papers are in the mail. Acting and I didn't exactly get divorced, but we saw far less of each other than we used to. When we did manage to hook up again, it was fantastic, but those times were few and far between.

This is going to take me more than one post to get through, so I'm gonna take a break here. To all of my regular readers (okay - both of my regular readers), I know this isn't exactly what you're used to reading here, but who knows - perhaps the dissection of my apparent mid-life crisis may in some way give up some sage financial advice. Speaking of sage advice, I've been eating fortune cookies as I've been typing this last bit, and it's very interesting what they have to say. These particular cookies have the fortune on one side of the paper, and an english word with the chinese translation on the other side. The first fortune read, "What great things would you attempt if you knew you could not fail." Word on the other side? "Excuse me." The second fortune read, "You will be traveling and come into a fortune." Word on the other side - "Disease." Not sure what to make of that one. The third fortune read, "A purpose is the eternal condition for success." Word on the other side - "Cheap". Perhaps success comes cheap if you have a purpose? I don't know. I don't know much of anything right now. I feel like I'm at the halftime show of my life - Janet Jackson just flashed her boob, blinding me by the light ricocheting off her nipple shield. So I can't see, I'm disoriented, and I'm just hoping I can find my way before the game starts again and I get trampled by the defensive line.

More later, I gotta get the sawdust out of my underwear.

Back in the Saddle Again (or...Once More, with Feeling)

"I've had it. Pressure turns coal into diamonds? Well, the self-imposed pressure that I'm feeling right now is enough to form a diamond encrusted sword with which I will slay this wretched, soul sucking beast of debt. The Dragon will Die; I'm going to kill it, I'm going to eat it's heart and I'm going to mount it's head on my freakin' wall.The beast will die completely and finally on December 31st, 2008. There - I've set the goal. Does it sounds ridiculous? Absurd? The Impossible Dream? Yeahhhhh....so what. JFK asked the scientist who would later be responsible for the space program what it would take to put a man on the moon. The scientist said, "The Will to Do It." This debt is taking away my financial future, my financial present, my social life, my time with my kids, their financial future - think about all that on a daily basis and see if you don't find the damned will to do just about anything."

Wow....I got chills just reading that, didn't you? Okay, okay - maybe it was just a bug on my neck. But in any case, the words are somewhat inspiring - at least I felt that they were when I wrote them on August 11th, 2007. Problem is, it didn't take. 12/31/08 came and went with the Debt Beast still eating comfortably, having flicked away with its yellowed scraggly claw the tiny peon frantically waving his shiny little stick in the Beast's general direction.

Said peon would, of course, be me. And, while the ideological side of me reads those words and gets re-invigorated, the jaded side of me that's drudged through the last year and a half since that was written reads it again and says..."what a yutz".

I'm no further ahead then when I started this blog, and that's depressing. So what went wrong? Well first off, I didn't work as hard or as smart as I could have or should have. So I'm changing that. I'm raising my rates on jobs so that I actually (gasp!) see a profit when all is said and done. If a client changes their minds about something, a change order will be signed and the price will increase. All jobs will be put in writing and nothing that is not on the page will be done without a change order and more money. Now, this is nothing new - contractors have been doing this for ages, but Debt Daddy has not. I made the mistake of getting too friendly with my clients as well as not valuing myself or my work as it should be valued. That ends this year. To paraphrase, "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and gosh darn it - people are gonna pay me for it".

What else went wrong? Underestimating my opponent. When I first got into this whole "slay the credit card beast" rigamarole, I imagined myself as Rocky in the first movie - the underdog going up against the Champ, Apollo Creed. I think I may have been able to win that one, or at least come out of it with a split decision. But debt comes in many forms, and it comes at you from several different directions at once and, before I knew it, I wasn't just fighting Apollo Creed, but Clubber Lang, Ivan Drago, and Tommy Gunn as well - and that was not a fight I was prepared for. I had prepared for a battle - I need to prepare for a war.

Another thing that sabatoged me - thinking that I could do it all on my own. Debt Daddy has always been of the mind that he didn't really need anyone else's help with anything, and admitting that he did was somehow a sign of weakness. Well, I'm trying to get over that feeling now, and make use of the resources around me. I have great friends that are offering advice and support as far as my business goes, and I'm taking it. I'm making an appointment with a financial counselor to sit down with my wife and I to examine our options (interestingly, this particular financial consulting company makes it a rule that they must speak with both spouses - not just one - to make sure that both parties are on board with debt elimination - I thought that was great); I'm even involving my wife more with my business. Turns out Debt Mommy has a gift for determining the true dollar value of my work. So far the quotes she's suggested, while being up to 30% higher than quotes I would have given, have been easily accepted by my clients, so I'm gonna keep running the jobs past her first. She's a keeper, she is.

I guess it's kind of like building a house. You can't build a house using only your hammer. You have to use many different tools, all working together to get the house built right. I'll beat this beast yet, but I can't do it overnight and I can't do it alone. It'll take time, it'll take help, it'll take perseverence and sweat, brains and guts, courage and tenacity....

It'll take every tool in the toolbox.