{"id":165,"date":"2000-06-05T17:00:00","date_gmt":"2000-06-05T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2000\/06\/05\/debtors_prison\/"},"modified":"2024-12-01T16:24:15","modified_gmt":"2024-12-02T00:24:15","slug":"debtors_prison","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2000\/06\/05\/debtors_prison\/","title":{"rendered":"Debtor&#8217;s Prison"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>My ass is killing me!<\/strong> 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.adobe.com\/products\/streamline\/main.html\" >Adobe Streamline<\/a> sucks as much as I do?) to hours and tedious hours of formatting lesson plans for a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thirteen.org\/wnetschool\/ntti\"  title=\"National Teacher Training Institute\">Thirteen project<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, the deadlines are starting to come together, I\u2019m 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&#8217;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:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Moving back to <a href=\"http:\/\/newyork.citysearch.com\"  title=\"Citysearch New York\">New York<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\" >Boston<\/a><\/b> 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.<\/li>\n<li><b><a href=\"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/img\/loft.jpg\" title=\"where I used to live\">The Bushwick Loft<\/a><\/b> 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.homedepot.com\" >Home Depot<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ikea.com\" >Ikea<\/a> 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.<\/li>\n<li><b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.brazil.com\" >Brazil<\/a><\/b> An incredible trip, but it basically wiped me out. that\u2019s 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, &#8220;I\u2019m young, I\u2019m fabulous, and I have the rest of my life to pay for this. Oh wow, look at the <i>bunda<\/i> on that one&#8230;&#8221;<\/li>\n<li><b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.pratt.edu\"  title=\"Pratt Institute\">Grad school<\/a><\/b> 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\u2019s 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&#8217;t have time to devote to my projects and no one would worry about it since I was still getting A&#8217;s. (And for the copy editors out there, I know there should be no apostrophe after that A, but I just don&#8217;t want it to look like &#8220;as&#8221;. Deal.) Oy! The money I spent on tuition and my projects. And those student loan people are like vultures!<\/li>\n<li><b><a href=\"http:\/\/www.warehouse.com\"  title=\"MacWarehouse\">Gadgets!<\/a><\/b> I\u2019m 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 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dell.com\"  title=\"Dell Computers\">computer<\/a> for a huge freelance project, but did I really need to splurge for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.palm.com\/products\/palmv\/\"  title=\"Palm Pilot\">Palm V<\/a> when I needed some way to keep track of my hours? I know it&#8217;s sexier than the earlier ones by half, but it was a little pricey. Oh well, as long as the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.apple.com\/powermac\/\"  title=\"Apple Macintosh G4\">G4s<\/a> stay completely, stratospherically out of my price range, I guess I\u2019m safe. <\/li>\n<li><b>That one month where I had to pay my rent with my credit card<\/b> Oh, I don&#8217;t even want to think about it anymore.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>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&#8217;t be afraid to <a href=\"mailto:Sparky@ultrasparky.org?subject=Sparky, Have I Got a Gig For You\">come a-knockin&#8217;.<\/a> My real expertise is with typography and print, but you might have noticed that I also know how to throw together a web site.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2000\/06\/05\/debtors_prison\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Debtor&#8217;s Prison&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultrapersonal"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=165"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69671,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/165\/revisions\/69671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}