You know the expression "It can't possibly get worse?" You know how whenever anyone says that it almost invariably… DOES get worse? It's been like that for me lately. Any of you who happen to read my blog probably consider me a pessimist with the relatively bleak outlook on life I've had the past several months. You may be right, my depression, which is again in full swing, probably forces me to focus on the negative aspects of life and ignore the good. This past week and a half however, I've been consciously trying to find the good, I have yet to find it.
Last Week was, as most people here in the USA know, tax day, April 15th. I received my W2 from Metrotime Business Systems on April 14th, no, I didn't say January, I said April, as in one day before the taxes were due. And as much as I had wished the W2 would alter my taxes slightly for the better (I had come up with a balance of owing $254 without that 1 W2), hoping that the fact that I claimed 0 deductions on the W4 to get that W2 would cause Metrotime to withhold too much money which would counteract the fact that also during this year I worked (again for Metrotime) under a 1099-MISC. It didn't, in fact, it made things worse, I now owed $306 on my federal taxes, I know that's not that much of a difference, but I didn't have $254 to begin with, $306 was killer. I had a check come in from a job but I didn't get the check UNTIL April 15th, and then too late in the day to deposit it in time, so I borrowed $100 from my father to make sure I had enough money in my account to pay my taxes.
Earlier in the week, I had been given a nice opportunity, in exchange for removing some spy-ware from a couple of Mike Stephen's (the head of my church's Men's Ministry) Computers, he would sponsor my way to go to the Men's Retreat which was leaving that Friday to go to Broken Bow, OK. So I went over there Tuesday evening and spent a number of hours fixing their computers and getting everything generally ship-shape. So Friday I was on my way up to Oklahoma.
My Ride wanted to leave relatively early, so before 10:30 in the morning we were off on our way. We stopped to eat lunch but I had absolutely no money, having had to put every dime of my income into my taxes, but Mike again spotted me a few bucks to try one of those new spicy chicken sandwiches at Burger King, which wasn't half bad btw, had more kick in it then things like that would usually have, and as I like kick, it was pretty good indeed. I was embarrassed being that financially helpless but Mike was very kind about it.
Over all the weekend was very nice, we arrived at about 2 in the afternoon and the first event on the agenda wasn't planned till 9. The reason for arriving so soon? The people who gave me a lift wanted to use the extra time to play some golf, I will never understand why about 85% of the men in this church seem to be addicted to Golf… but anyway, I quite enjoyed having the entire area practically to myself, I just sat on the porch of one of the cabins and read, listening to the sounds of nature. I had a lot of reading time over the following couple days and read several books from the Chronicles of Narnia series, which was a nice break. The speaker was interesting, but kept going on and on about how to be a happy Christian we should be poor and not own anything because things distract us from what is really important. While in general, I agree with him, the Good Lord hasn't blessed me with the ability to have lots of things to distract me. I have my Computer, which is what I use for work, but other then that I own nothing, and I don't even technically own the computer, my Dad bought it with his credit since I have no credit and couldn't be approved for anything.
Saturday I spent much of the day taking pictures for a PowerPoint presentation we will play this coming Sunday, which reminds me…. I need to make that PowerPoint presentation…. I was about to go try out part of the ropes course myself actually, as it has been many years since I've done a ropes course and I was much looking forward to it. I had even climbed part way up the pole when I realized 2 things nearly simultaneously. First, while the harness was holding ME from falling to the ground, it was apparently not stopping my pants from falling, cause my pants were slipping as I was climbing and there wasn't much I could do about it except come down, the second thing I realized was that I had been put in charge of making sure everyone who went on the ropes course had a release form signed (insurance reasons and all that), but though I had so meticulously made sure that everyone was covered, I had started climbing without signing one myself… So I climbed down, and rather then waste time while I signed the form and found some way to secure my slacks, I just let the next person go and skipped the course.
On Sunday I again got to sit and read while the people who were my ride went off to play golf for a few hours, so I got some more reading done, it was overall a pretty relaxing time, but it was oh so short.
Upon arriving back at home I again found myself in the position of being looked down upon by my Father. Money was gone, and it wasn't going to come back, and what had I done when I ran out of money? I had gone on a retreat. This week hasn't gone all that well, my laptop is broken again and I haven't had time to call Dell and schedule them to come out and fix it again, so I set up the docking station so that the laptop is still usable (if not mobile) on a desk in my room and did some rearranging. I started a project of trying to clean my room, but now my room is much worse then it was when I started the project, so it's not helping much. On top of everything I was going to go out for a paying consulting job today,b ut last night I started coming down with something, and today I'm convinced it's the flu.
So I did not go do the job today so I'm not going to get that little bit of pay. Yesterday I rejoined ACTD but I found out today there are 2 paying sound gigs I can do this Saturday (never done a sound gig for profit before, unless you count the little thank you checks I got from the SWDCMA for District Conference and Team Leadership Conference), but one of them is right smack on top of the first ACTD mission I would have played now that I'm back, so, being in dire need of money, I'm sending the ACTDers an e-mail to let them know that I'm really sorry to do this on my first week back and all, but I've got to miss this week's game to handle the paying gig. It really bites, big time.