october 8

i will survive

I'm dealing with this war shit in a way that's completely opposite from how I dealt with 9/11. I'm hyper-organized, super-energized, completely lucid. This is, in part, because I have a shitload of work to do. I think it's also because business is still behind after I dropped out of the land of the living for two weeks in September and I'm terrified if I do the same now I'll lose it all. I have to keep moving on. Or I'll starve.

I realize there's just a teensy break in my narrative here. I know it's not the first time. It's not that long a story so I'll just list out the pertinent facts here:

1. Back in this entry I talked about how A* was preparing his resume for a job he didn't want to apply for because he wants to keep working for himself. Well, he was the guy who ran The Boutique, where I've worked most of this year. Paranoia forced me to obscure facts. Now I don't care. The back story is that A* and I put all of our financial eggs in one basket all this year, about 3 months too long it seems now, to pursue our dream. Business got to be too slow to support the both of us. When this job fell in his lap he jumped at it.

2. That left me to run The Boutique. At one level, I was incredibly excited. Finally, I was running my own show. But it's not so much fun to run a show that's on its way out, and there's only so much I can do about it. I was able to sublet some of our office space at a profit and get some work in the door to pay some of the bills, but it's still dicey. Happily, Lisa, my creative director, decided to stay on board, and I have a great network of freelancers. But odds are still that this isn't going to fly. *sigh*

3. Now for the really fun part: This job that A* started on 9/10 is now in jeopardy. High burn rate coupled with stalled sales after the 11th (and most of the quarter) have forced them to make severe cutbacks, like half the company. In reality, this company can't survive without the consultants group that A* belongs to. They make the product useful to their clients. But A* and I have learned that companies don't always make the right decisions, no matter how obvious they are. Day after tomorrow we'll know if he still has a job.

4. The only saving grace may be that I'm interviewing for a sales job at a company that I could stand to work for. I don't want the job, but I'll take it if it makes the difference between going further into debt, losing my house, starving, or not dealing with any of those things. The thing that would depress me the most is that I wouldn't be able to be a producer anymore. I'd just be doing new biz and account management. I am capable of doing that, but it doesn't excite me. At all.

Okay. So you're caught up. Sorry if that was confusing.

In the meantime I've landed a small redesign project for a marketing consulting company in LA. Tomorrow I hope to close a contract on a usability analysis. And I have a freelance producing gig through another agency. In terms of the work I'm doing, I'm in heaven. Love it. I love love love being a producer. It's what I'm born to do, what I've always wanted to do, and I'm a fucking rock star at it. I am. And I worked damned hard to get here, making a million mistakes along the way. And dammit, I want to keep doing it. I don't want to do sales. I have to hope that A* won't get laid off, I'll get more work at The Boutique and this will all work out. But I also know that I may have to take that sales job and just suck it up. Fuck. Me.

And all this is happening as we're bombing Afghanistan. Up until Friday night I really believed we would not bomb but would go in with supersecret ninja dudes and take out the terrorists like sharpshooters. It was my last stage of denial. When Bush started telling people to "get ready, it's coming," I knew I'd been naive. I knew it would happen soon. So on Sunday, when A*'s brother called us at the mall and told us what was happening, I wasn't surprised and I didn't fall apart. I watched Rumsfeld's press conference then that was it. I went about my life.