About Panicking

I'm a carpenter for a living.  I'm not really so much a contractor, per se, as I'm a poor business-man.  But I do know something about how to put two or 500 sticks together and make them stay up for the rest of one's natural life, and I can make a living at it in the right context.  I'm not particularly afraid of heights, I'm only sleight of build but am strong and fit enough to climb most anything, I can crawl under/through tight passageways, don't mind working all day at something I can 'get a bead on', and I can put out a nice tight piece of work.  I'm pretty savvy about working with other people on a good day...

I'm also kind of a temperamental, semi-thin-skinned, ever so slightly volatile dude.  And honestly, there are things I'd rather do than go fuss over some almost-wealthy white-collar guy's Mahogany back-porch with a cantilevered, overhanging trellis above what looks like a high-end Chinese chicken house... or some other frivolous swing of fancy he can afford to worry over... but that's not relevant to the post today except to reinforce the unstable aspect of my own character.  I'm not jealous of such a person or his station, just kind of sick of running after his squeaky-white trivial temporal desires.  So ancient Rome...

Anyhow, all that aside, the last aspect of this is THE ECONOMY.  Tired of those words?  Me too... in fact I'm just so entirely done with living in a state that this artificial system- that doesn't belong to me- has me in, that I'm really interested in getting innovative.  Not in the criminal sense, but in the much tamer, even more creative sense.  But that's a slim market right there!  It's in the pot anyhow, simmering with all my other grand, out-of-reach-for-today ideas... but this economy thing is real enough that I have to contend with it, and quite frankly work has been utterly stupid-slow.  I haven't had steady work in a long time, and there are different reasons for that.  Some are my fault (I just want to play my bass, it's true).  Some are not...  My current employer has had a very slow time with producing work for me/us to do, and I nearly skipped town for a couple weeks to go earn some "real bread"- but weather would not permit.  By the time weather did permit I figured I'd better try and keep my regular job safe and I declined to go off in the end.  Someone else got the gig, and here I am, typing this blog entry instead of earning a nice personal home bail-out package.

I have a kid in a private school- we can't actually afford that, but she's really starting to do well and we've had issues- not with my kid but with the school system here.  I won't go there now, but it's  been damn ugly.  I should have sued them... didn't.  But I have to pay for the private school, and there's been no steady work.  I have to pay a mortgage, buy stuff, pay for lights and (soon) heat, you know the drill.  So the result of all this inability to pay for stuff has been... panic.  I'm selling my music gear- 2 bass amplifier heads, 2 cabs, a bass, other stuff.  I'm left with enough to go play, but it's gotten very Spartan.  Okay, I like Spartan.   But I don't like being pressed in this way. And I don't like to panic.  I'm starting to feel a little sick...

Hopefully things change soon.