My ass is killing me! Except for an hour-long emergency nap, I basically sat in my uncomfortable desk chair for 17 hours straight yesterday, moving from some blogging to designing tedious trade show banners (and does anyone else think Adobe Streamline sucks as much as I do?) to hours and tedious hours of formatting lesson plans for a Thirteen project.
Yes, the deadlines are starting to come together, I’m in that uncomfortable space between one income trailing off and another beginning, and the IRS just realized that I neglected to include a check with my tax return for last year. You’d never know from my apparent poverty that I actually make pretty decent money. But a series of ridiculous expenditures over the years has kept me in a constant state of catch-up, and it sucks. Here are the primary culprits:
- Moving back to New York from Boston I had no debt at all shortly before I left Boston, but a last-minute trip to China put me in the hole. so when I got back, the whole move down here basically done on credit.
- The Bushwick Loft An enormous, awesome 4,000 square feet of raw loft deliciousness that Mark and I lived in when I first moved back to New York. It was cool as hell, but it took many visits to Home Depot and Ikea to get it to look that way. Ch-ching! Of course, all that money was wasted by the next year because the junkie we were subletting our half of the floor from basically chased us out. Oh yeah, then paying for another move 14 months after moving in.
- Brazil An incredible trip, but it basically wiped me out. that’s what I get for travelling to exotic foreign countries on a whim. Again. It was one of those moments where you have such an incredible time that you think, “I’m young, I’m fabulous, and I have the rest of my life to pay for this. Oh wow, look at the bunda on that one…”
- Grad school A very, very expensive way for me to learn that I have too much experience to get much out of being a part-time student in a program that’s not as customizable as it first appears. Doing just enough work to finish in time for class still had me somewhere at the top of the curve, meaning I could slack off when I didn’t have time to devote to my projects and no one would worry about it since I was still getting A’s. (And for the copy editors out there, I know there should be no apostrophe after that A, but I just don’t want it to look like “as”. Deal.) Oy! The money I spent on tuition and my projects. And those student loan people are like vultures!
- Gadgets! I’m one of those guys with the gadget gene, meaning I begin to salivate uncontrollably when I see electronics I think I need. Now, I admit that I needed the second computer for a huge freelance project, but did I really need to splurge for the Palm V when I needed some way to keep track of my hours? I know it’s sexier than the earlier ones by half, but it was a little pricey. Oh well, as long as the G4s stay completely, stratospherically out of my price range, I guess I’m safe.
- That one month where I had to pay my rent with my credit card Oh, I don’t even want to think about it anymore.
So remember kids, if you or anyone you know is in need of a graphic designer with a truckload of experience and mad skillz (as the kids say), don’t be afraid to come a-knockin’. My real expertise is with typography and print, but you might have noticed that I also know how to throw together a web site.
