Reverse Country

There's a bad joke about what happens if you play a country/western album backwards. The joke says that "You get your house back, your car back, your woman back, and you get your whole damn life back." The last three to four weeks have essentially been a reverse country song for me.

The job situation has finally ironed itself out. I'm in a good place with where I'm working, and I'll be getting my first full-time paycheck tomorrow.

My wife's health is slowly returning to normal, but it's taking a bit longer. Her stress level went through the roof after the layoff, and it really affected her negatively. She felt betrayed by a certain person there that she felt she could trust.

Financially, I'm almost back to where I was when I was laid off...almost. I've got one last "overlimit" I need to swat tomorrow, a collection letter off to JAGTech & Associates for fees associated with their bounced paychecks, and a couple of holidays that came during this whole period that I need to make up for.

That said, it's scary to see how close to the edge we were living. Games can pay a living wage, but rarely enough that you can sock a lot into savings. With how crazy inflation was last year, our rent went up enough that even the cost of living increase ended up being enough of a decrease that it depleted our already meager savings for the remainder of the year.

We've got a good savings plan that we've set up for this year, though. If we're able to stick to it, we should have at least six months worth of living expenses saved in liquid funds by the end of the year.

The only black spot on this recovery is something I can't talk about anymore. I got an E-mail today taking me to task for publicly bringing up a promise made to me back in December when I was already in shock and hurting from what had just happened to me, so to protect my interests, I'm going to keep that quiet for a little bit longer.