One reason I haven't been posting lately -- other than the occasional YouTube-hosted wisecrack -- has to do with big changes in the Conway household. We're selling our house and buying another one, and if you don't think we've gone through some nail-biting during the past few weeks of financial crisis, you've been living on another planet, and part of me wishes I were with you.
As someone who's watched his career go up and down like a roller coaster piloted by a text-messaging teenager, I approach any long-term financial commitment with a certain amount of, let us say, trepidation. For the last six or seven years, Karen and I have been extremely conservative with our finances, living in a house that costs us much less than we could afford, and socking away ever spare dime in savings. (Conservative savings, too, so, luckily, we avoided getting smashed by the stock market crash last week.) The result is, we're in pretty good shape to weather any short (or moderately long) term setbacks. And that really won't change as a result of selling our current house and buying a new one. But our payments will go up, and that pushes us close to the edge of our comfort zone -- and then, on top of that, like everyone else in the country we've been pretty rattled by the economic news of the last few weeks and months. Not to mention the yo-yo drama of the current presidential election.
So I haven't been in the mood to update this blog. I've been, well, preoccupied.
Mind you, anxiety isn't the only emotion I've been experiencing lately. I'm pleased that Rachel is enjoying her new school, I'm having fun writing my first comic-book project in almost two decades, Karen and I are having a great time picking out new furniture and other goodies for the new house, and I barely noticed my birthday passing by a couple of weeks ago. (I'm at the age now where celebrating a birthday seems a bit hubristic.) All in all, life is good. Actually, life is better than good. The fly in that ointment, of course, is the fact that life is anything but good for so many of my fellow Americans.
Sigh.
Our country will survive this economic (and political) crisis. A lot of hungry chickens are coming home to roost -- decades of fiscal mismanagement in the name of a political and economic philosophy that failed spectacularly less than a century ago, and seems to have failed again. (Why oh why do we never seem to learn from our mistakes as a nation? Why does each generation have to repeat the follies of their grandparents' generation? Why is the earth round? Why don't ducks fall up? Bears ask, do humans crap in the house? Questions, questions, questions.)
Anywho, anyhow, interesting times. And that's why I haven't been blogging much.
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3 comments:
Glad you're back.
The recent financial 'downturn' hasn't affected me much either, as I had to declare bankruptcy a few years ago after being out of work for 3 out of 4 years. Tough to have savings when you're making 50% of what you were and are on a pay-as-you go basis.
On a sunnier note, what's the comic project? I'll want to pick it up when it comes out. I still have enough disposable income to pick up occasional comics and graphic novels.
Looking forward to the comic you are writing.
I would also like to chat about the comics you've worked on in the past.
Doug
Same here on the financial front. The less said, the better. But as you mentioned, a reckoning awaits.
It used to be said that folks who did not learn from history's mistakes were doomed to repeat them.
Nowadays, it seems like we repeat our mistakes so often, that history itself has grown dedundant.
Good luck with your new project Ger.
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