Dear World:

Pthbt.

So I haven’t actually said so ‘out loud’ before, but I’ve been driving a cab for a living.  It’s what I was doing when I wasn’t involved in something related to music or the music business or being a dad when I left, and when the unemployment rate is 15%+ you take whatever the hell you can get. 

Haven’t been making much money, and there are other frustrations that I won’t even bother with because it’s mostly BS that I don’t even want around me, let alone to discuss at length here in my normally cheerful and upbeat blog ;-) It’s certainly not a career path, but it’s something to keep me afloat and one part of what I can do and/or have been doing to get and stay afloat after my little vacation in the southwest :P

So the company I’ve been driving for has basically been a two-man show since I got there:  me and the owner.  She only has two vehicles, a 9-15 passenger van and a Lumina.  She drives the van.  She drives, period; if there’s one car, she’ll be driving it. 

There’s one car.

I got ass-ended by some drunk college girl up on campus tonight.  Totaled my cab >.<

I’m not even bummed about it.  I’d been feeling like I would move on from that faster than initially planned – at least to another company, and I’ve got the connections to get back to work without too much problem – and a couple of times (like ongoing but unfinished discussions with potential clients) I’ve wondered if the world wasn’t trying to tell me something.  I’ve been close to walking off a couple of times, but haven’t, and wouldn’t.  I *do* need *any* income I can get!  Last time I talked about work people kept saying “well you’re not too got to work here or there,” like I’d ever claimed to be.  I’ll take whatever, so long as it pays for itself and for me to live, and I’m competent to do the job (or ideally actually GOOD at it rather than just competent).

Anyway, Now the world has ensured that a) I’m still alive and b) my current employment situation has been increasingly untenable anyway, I guess it seems the world has said it’s piece ;-).

No injuries I’m aware of, little sore in the neck and back.  If it’s still bothering me in a couple of days I’ll go to the hospital and have them look at it.  I felt bad for the girl who hit me.  Now, people who aren’t from Michigan may not know this, but you can’t walk into a courtroom in this state on a DUI charge and walk out for less than six grand PLUS classes PLUS some kind of yearly maintenance fee they impose only on people who get tickets.  AND a felony on her record, although if her lawyer’s good he’ll find a way to get the charges thrown out/reduced/reversed contingent on the defendants attendance and compliance blah blah blah.

This is probably where a lot of people would start going OMG BINGO CHACHING GET THAT INSURANCE COMPANY MONEH MONEH MONEH MOOONEHHHH…..

Not my style in the least.  No offense intended to anyone who’s ever had to draw an insurance payment in a ‘adversarial’ situation, but that kind of lottery-winner thinking is in my opinion part of the problem, and I won’t participate in it regardless of whether I need it or not.  Like I said, if it’s still bugging me in a couple of days, I’ll go to a doc and have it looked at.

Anyway, yeah.  I’ll be taking the rest of the weekend off, and give my current boss a day to contact the people who are supposedly behind her funding her business.  If there’s a solid plan to have another car on the road by the weekend, then I’ll continue working for her and see how things go.  If not, my old employer will hire me back, and I’ll be able to go to work for the company I planned on moving to when that company gets their next car up.  Plus with my old employer I’ll be able to do it without hurting feelings.  He’s a businessman who will profit by a predictable and reliable amount by putting me on the road, even for one day, so he will.  When I’m ready to move on we’ll shake hands and I’ll move on.

In the mean time, it looks like I’ve got some time on my hands to take care of some neglected issues, starting with things I need to take care of around here, getting some kind of start on the website idea I was working on back in NC, and generally catching up as much as I can for the next few days on everything I’m behind on personally and professionally.  I’ve got a couple of discussions pending about contracts for web design…who knows?  If those come through it’ll amount to enough to re-invest in myself somehow, and unlike my situation in NC, I’ve basically always got the cab business to back me up.  Especially once I go to work for my friend – she’s got the business to keep me making money, and she’ll be covered well enough and we’re good enough friends that if I say “I need a couple of months of short weeks to go bust my ass and kick these websites out,” then she’ll be okay with that.

So yeah, as I write this, I think it’s fair to say that I feel genuinely positive and hopeful about my life for the first time since June. 

And I just had to get ass-ended at 35 miles an hour by a drunk college student and lose my job to do it.

Funny how life works, huh?

We’ll see how the next week or so goes.