Yay! Royalties!

I was at the local Barnes & Noble the other day picking up a birthday present for my sister and, while there, decided mosey over to the science section to see if they had any copies of my book. What to my wondering should appear, but a paperback edition of Discovering the Mammoth. It looks very nice. I bought a copy to show people and took it to dinner at my corner brewpub. While I was showing it to some of the regulars, two young women from Seattle asked about it. I ended up selling it to them and autographing it with a cartoon of a mammoth in the snow.

The hardback was paid for by an upfront advance that was gone by this time last year.* For this edition, I'll be paid with royalties that will come twice a year. I don't expect more than a few hundred dollars per check, but it will be a nice little bonus when each arrives.

* That's why I was begging all year, hunting for work, and too depressed to write. Last month, I started receiving Social Security which, while not enough to make me completely independent again, has taken a lot of weight off my shoulders. I've already begun writing again and will have some things for the blogs very soon.

Things are not going well

Too long; didn't read version: I'm unemployed, broke, and the storage place is going to auction off all of my belongings in a few days. Send money.

When I began blogging, about fifteen years ago, I debated with myself over how personal I wanted to get. Should I talk about my depression and other issues or stick to commenting on the rest of the world? I chose the latter. I'm a fairly shy and private person and just wasn't that comfortable opening up to a bunch of strangers. I've opened up a bit on social media, but I still keep the blogs (when I get around to writing anything) pretty much business only. But, I can't do that anymore. I need help and I don't know where else to turn.

In 2012, my life imploded somewhat. Among other things, I lost my house, got divorced, and my baby sister died. I tried living by myself for a while, but that didn't work out. I decided to move back to Alaska where my family and oldest friends are. And there I ran into a snag. When I called around to get estimates from movers, I found out it would cost several times more than I thought, about twice as much as I had to my name to ship my stuff. Two tons of books kind of complicates things.

I haven't been able to get back on my feet up here. My sisters have covered my room and board. I try to cover my other expenses. I sold my comic book collection (which had been at my baby sister's house all these years). I had two jobs, but neither was permanent. I sold my book and lived off the advance. That ran out just before Thanksgiving. At that point I had a few encouraging looking job prospects that might open after the first of the year. My ex, Tessa, set up a GoFundMe to raise, what we hoped would be, enough tide me through to a first paycheck. One by one they each fizzled out. We begged for enough to get me through another month, and then another after that. And, I'm back where I was in December: I'm broke, my bills are overdue, and I have one good job prospect, but, even if it pans out, the first check won't arrive in time.

The only long-term solution is that I get a job that pays an adult wage so I can be independent again. My ideal is a telecommuting job that I can do in Alaska while I save up enough to go to Washington and get my stuff. But anything that pays my bills with some walking around money left over is good. If you know of anything or have any connections, please let me know.

Meanwhile, this is where I am. I need $450 by EOD Thursday to save my belongings**, my life. Soon after that, another round of bills hits.

PS - My hard drive is making funny noises.

* My bills. I's hard to rank them. Obviously the storage unit worries me the most. I have a phone. Everyone needs a phone. I also need mine for data since there is no internet where I live. I have an old credit card that I'm trying to pay off. Medicaid pays most, but not all of my medical and medication bills. That leaves food and walking around money. I'm out of coffee for the first time in about forty years, but the storage unit is more important (see below).

** About my stuff. I'm clinically a bit of a hoarder. Hence the 110 boxes of books. Just not living with my stuff is a big source of anxiety. But, I'm also the family historian. The storage unit includes about 150 years worth of photographs, family bibles, Masonic paraphernalia, my dad's papers from the Atomic Energy Commission, and a china hutch hand-made in the 1890s. I live 1500 miles away from the storage unit. I can't borrow someone's van and drive over to rescue the best stuff before the unit becomes reality show prop. It's either all saved or all gone.

Why do I try?

In all my years of blogging, the post that got the most comments was the simple question "Am I the only one who still thinks of unlined paper as 'typing paper?'"

Today on Twitter, I repeated someone else's mild joke about President's Day and, so far, I've had fifty favorites and retweets, by far the most I've had for anything I've ever said.

Instead of spending all this time researching a book, I should have just gone on social media years ago, written "So, what's the deal with mammoths?" and appended a hashtag for Jerry Seinfeld. It would have instantly made me Mr. Mammoth throughout the internet and gotten me an appearance on the Tonight Show and a fifteen minute NPR feature.

Where have you been, young man?

While putting up my last post, I noticed That it's been five weeks since my last post. What's that all about? As I said in the last post, I planned to spend the month of November just writing the damn book, no research, no translations. I didn't quite make my goal, but I wrote over two chapters and about 18,000 words. Another month and a half at that speed and I could have produced a complete (very) rough draft.

I'm not getting that month and a half just yet. I'm down to my last few thousand dollars and paying work has not exactly leaped into my lap. In November, I sent my resume to a couple jobs that I thought I was exceptionally well qualified for and lost out on all of them. So, with the crisis at hand, I finally gave into the inevitable and decided I have to go back to Alaska. I'm not thrilled about the choice--I feel like I'm admitting complete failure and running home with my tail between my legs--but it's probably the best thing for me. I have family and old friends--a "social support network"--there. This means I've spent most of the last two weeks having non-stop anxiety attacks interrupted only by paralytic panic attacks. Good times. Good times.

It's almost over. I have ten days left. Today, I talked to the mover I'm pretty sure I'll hire. My biggest problems now are getting rid of some stuff in storage and figuring out how to get to the airport after I sell the car (it's 75 miles and two counties away). Then Christmas in AK, followed by a new panic over getting an apartment and a job. If things stabilize then, I'll jump back into the book and finish a draft by the end of February.

And that's the way it is, December 12, 2013.

My life is an episode of Monk

I just copied a pair of 18th Century scientific illustrations and, looking at them, thought "My God, these things are crooked! I cannot use them like this." So I opened them each in a cheap graphics program and grabbed the rotate tool where I discovered the first illustration was one whole degree out of alignment. Clearly, the OCD meds are not working as well as they used to. Worse, the second illustration was one and a half degrees out of alignment and the cheap tool I was using could only make full degree adjustments. If I wasn't so poor, that half degree would be enough to drive me to get a full-fledged graphics program.