I titled this piece back in the beginning of September, right after I’d paid the rent. At the time, I legitimately had no idea how the money for October would come in, or if it would. Then it did. And I proceeded to start worrying about November rent. Which is due tomorrow, and will be paid. But in true broken record fashion, I have no idea how December will find our rent situation.
One of the reasons my posts have been so text light is because I actually have some work coming in and it’s taking all my energy. The other reason is I don’t actually have a very good idea of what I’m doing anymore. We got to such a shitty place this month that I really started wondering if it was wise to continue on hoping enough contracts would come in to save us. It was clear to me that I was working as much and as hard as I possibly could, and that it wasn’t going to cut it.
Yeah, most months were better than the month before. Yeah, it seemed like people were finally starting to know I exist and have some small idea of what I do, but was it enough? How many months can we go on like this? How many times could I seriously reevaluate the merits of indoor living before I threw in the towel?
But that brings up another question I don’t have an answer for. What else would I do? Yeah, it’s bullshit trying to get clients. I spend 10 hours of effort to get 10 minutes of paid work, but at least with the clients I usually get some kind of response in the end. I spent an entire year or more applying to job after job after job in LA, Portland, Seattle, New York, Denver, even Salt Lake City and got nothing. I don’t think I could go back to that again. I’m still getting auto-generated rejection emails from that massive barrage of applications I dumped into the world. I even got one yesterday. Actually, the one I got yesterday was from the Target job I applied for two weeks ago. Apparently I am not Target material. Although do I appreciate their timely response.
Because I am actually on some projects right now, I don’t feel the crushing weight of despair that had been my constant companion these last few months. I probably should, because I’m still not making anything near the kind of money we need to be able to live, but I’m just so crazy excited to have paying work at all that I’ve decided to think about that other shit later.
I have started applying for full time work again, but only in Oregon. I also decided to focus all my new client recruitment on Oregon, although I’ve been so busy with other things that I haven’t actually done any client recruitment this week or last. Part of me wonders if changing my geographic focus is such a good idea just when I was starting to get some response from my cold calling and community outreach. But the rest of me wants to get to Oregon before I fucking rot to death here in LA, and I know that the more work I find down here, the more reason I have to stay somewhere I hate.
In other news: I started the test piece that’ll serve as my warm up for the hand-carved Masturbate poster. Here’s a preview. And some of my blood.