Welcome to Jestertunes! If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Feel free to leave a comment, read through the archives, and enjoy yourself. See you again real soon!
I haven’t really written about all the stuff that is going right now… mostly because I don’t want to appear to be looking for sympathy. Partly because I spend more than enough time thinking about everything that I try to write on all these blogs just to give my mind something else to do.
Here’s a little bulleted summary of all the stuff going on, keeping in mind that I could probably write an entire book on each of the following:
- My business partner and I have split ways. Our 6 year+ friendship seems to be over and she has all but accused me of stealing from the company. In actuality, she owes me well over $20,000 in back salary and reimbursable expenses. I spent 2 years of my life working my ass off to try and turn a business that was losing $5,000/month into a profitable one. I worked 70 and 80 hour weeks non-stop on her behalf. I took on responsibilities that were well above and beyond what I agreed to do (and beyond what our written agreement laid out). UMB worked with me for no additional salary for over a year. I sacrificed my career momentum, health insurance, and retirement savings and put my own dreams of opening my own business on hold to help her achieve her dream. And now she’s trying to screw me out of money that is rightly owed to me. I’m not even asking for a piece of either company. I’m not asking for anything more than what I should have been paid. But I’m aware that I chose to do this. No one twisted my arm and made me go to work for her. She is leaving me little choice but to take her to court. It’s going to be ugly.
- The house. Long story short: Countrywide Mortgage Company should be investigated for fraud. They are trying to foreclose on the house. They have lost payments, placed payments in a “holding account” instead of applying them to the mortgage, and they have opened several unnecessary escrow accounts and refused to refund them. They have raised the interest rate twice this year, DOUBLING my mortgage payment (you may remember from above that I have not been paid in quite a while). Phone calls made to them require a minimum of a half hour on hold, only to discover that I am talking to the wrong department and need to be transferred, which means being put on hold again, only to be disconnected during the call transfer. This happens EVERY time I call them. My parents and I have retained an attorney who is trying to stop the foreclosure. And I have to try and recreate the sequence of events and locate any paperwork relating to the mortgage that came in during the period of time when I was working 70+ hours a week. I have NO idea where anything is. I fear I’ve tossed most of that shit.
- I have had absolutely no response to my resume being sent out over the past several weeks. I had an interview scheduled for last week, but the guy canceled at the last minute. He has not rescheduled. I don’t think anyone is interested in hiring someone who has been self-employed for the past two years. Especially when that someone never finished getting his degree.
- The one thing that has kept me (us) from just picking up and leaving California (to go where?) is my involvement with the two bands I play in. It’s the one thing (besides writing here) that I get to do for myself and look forward to every week. Lately, both of them seem to be falling apart. No recent gigs, nothing really coming up… and the bass player that Total Eclipse finally found (after a couple of months of searching) may be a complete flake that is going to stunt our progress and ability to play all the gigs that we usually get for the summer.
- The first of the month is rapidly approaching, meaning that bills that I can’t pay are due.
- I can’t sleep, even when I’m exhausted. I finally took a handful of benadryl at 8am to get some rest. Of course that caused me to sleep through the phone, leaving my parent’s calls unanswered, pissing them off.
- I can no longer tell where the CFS leaves off and the full on funk begins. I have no energy and no desire or money to do anything. I haven’t left the house since last Saturday. I actually put on pants today, but only because my aunt stopped by with a message from my parents.
- I need a shower.
- I need to dye my roots.
Now that I’ve totally laid all this shit out and depressed the hell out of all of you, I’ll end this post with a little snippet of appropriate conversation I had with an ex-friend of UMB’s a couple of years ago. Let’s call him Jack because he was a real life version of Mr. McFarland from Will and Grace. Stereotypically flamboyant, snobby, with a sugar daddy that bought him a new convertible every year. I hated him instantly.
Jack: “I went through a period a few months ago where I think I was suicidal. Nothing made me happy. I didn’t have a job and didn’t need one, which made me feel kind of useless.”
Me: “That’s awful. What did you do?”
Jack: “Well, this one day I was laying on the couch feeling sorry for myself. I just couldn’t picture going on one more day. It was awful. But then I went out and bought new window treatments and everything was ok after that.”
::awkward silence::
::more awkward silence::
Me: “Jack, that may be the gayest thing I have ever heard.”
