An Attempt At Regaining Some Semblance Of Regularity

This year has been off to a far less than awesome start, and my lack of anything that resembles much of a personal schedule is at least part of the problem.

When this year started, I had hoped that 2014 would be a better year for me than 2013 had been. It's not that 2013 was a particularly bad year for me. Not by any stretch, and to try saying otherwise would be a lie, which is something I'm not particularly good at telling. With that in mind, though, I must say that it could easily have been better, too.

Most of last year had been at least serviceable. In fact, that's how I'd describe the first eleven months of the year. Sure, there were things that had gone wrong or bad between January 1 and November 30, but nothing too terribly beyond my capacity to handle. Better yet, there were even a few good things to balance out the bad ones. I needed some rather expensive repairs on my car this year, but I had the money to cover it. The ice storm in the spring couldn't have come at a worse time, because my dad had just gotten to a point where he could start walking again after having a hip replaced, but he still managed to recover well enough to be hunting again in the fall.

Unfortunately, the last day of November had to click over to the first day of December, and that's when the shit started hitting the fan, so to speak. The biggest problem with December is that employers like mine started cutting their employees' hours to less than thirty a week, presumably as a result of provisions in the Affordable Healthcare Act. I'm not necessarily saying I blame them for that, of course. It's something that would almost certainly be expensive, and everybody's in business to make money, after all. Thing of it is, though, it puts me in something of a tough spot, as now I'm going to have to find a way of getting my income back up to a place where I can afford to continue living, and I still don't have health insurance.

So, where I am now is in a place where I need to start fixing things. That means starting with a plan of some sort. Part of that plan is figuring out what I'm going to do with my time. The good news is that I do have something like a template I can start with. I've still got regular hours at my day job, which is a good thing. I'm not going to publish that here, because the people who need to know that already do.

From there, I'm going to need to figure out what I'm going to do with my now-increased amount of free time. This plan I came up with back in September seems like a good place to start. I'll still need to have a little fun every now and then, after all. Keeping my spirits up is going to be especially important right now. I'd certainly like to keep blogging, as well. I still enjoy doing it, and I'm still holding out a small, if foolish, amount of hope that maybe I can get a little money for it as well.

And then there's the matter of looking for another actual job. It's kind of a scary thing, because I haven't really done that in five years, minimum. It's not just scary because it means having to put myself out there in the job market again after what seems like an eternity. It's also because I know there's going to be an added element of risk in an already precarious situation, which is the sort of thing that always has made me nervous, perhaps more than it should. One reason for that is at least lightly touched upon in this Upworthy article, which seems to be at least partly op-ed.

Knowing that I have at least the beginnings of a plan will certainly put my mind at ease, and hopefully it will do the same for a few others as well. It's a place to start, anyway. Figuring out what else I need to do to fix my situation should be at least a little easier now.

I'm going to at least try to do a show on my uStream channel later tonight (1/14/14). I will shoot for the 9:30 pm US Central start time if I decide to do it. Those of you who follow me on Facebook and/or Twitter will know as soon as I do if and when that's going to happen. The plan, for now, is that I'll see you then, but stay tuned for updates.