I know one of the biggest mis­takes in blog­ging is to blog about why you’re not blog­ging (META ALERT) but as you’ll see below, avoid­ing mis­takes doesn’t seem to be one of my tal­ents. So I thought I’d let my read­ers know what’s going on in my life these days and how that’s affect­ing my writ­ing, both fic­tion and non­fic­tion. If my per­sonal life or how I try to work writ­ing into it along with every­thing else doesn’t inter­est you, move along. Maybe today’s Mar­maduke is funny.

I got a bit of a shock Wednes­day. I had expected a main­te­nance guy to start re-​tiling my shower, in which I’d jammed fallen tiles back into place at angles so they braced against each other. It’s been this way for nearly a year. Such is the qual­ity estab­lish­ment in which I cur­rently live. I’ve also had my car stolen out of the reserved park­ing spot lit­er­ally ten feet away from my bal­cony. Klassy with a K is what I’m saying.

When I got home, it looked like they hadn’t even started. Curi­ous, I headed over to the leas­ing office to find out what was up. The apart­ment man­ager, a real sweet­heart who has always been on my side, told me that the work­man com­plained about the smell and that her boss told her that I had to go. There was noth­ing she could do. She’d give me a good ref­er­ence and it wouldn’t be treated as an evic­tion if I coop­er­ated, but I had until the end of the month.

I’ll freely admit that legally, I had this com­ing. One of my cats, Kosh, is a “spe­cial” cat. If the cat­box isn’t com­pletely clean, he’ll go else­where. I try to clean this up when I know about it, but there’s only so much a vac­uum cleaner can do, and if he whizzes some­where when I’m at work, I won’t even notice it on the tan car­pet until long after the odor mol­e­cules, which form unbreak­able bonds with acrylic car­pet fiber, have become per­ma­nent addi­tions. No mat­ter what I do, the place smells like a cat­box. I’ve become com­pletely inured to it, and hardly notice it any­more, but I’ve been told it’s pretty notice­able. So sure, they have a legit beef.

It was a shock, com­ing with no warn­ing, but I ral­lied. I still had some of my tax refund in the bank, and had two pay­checks com­ing by March 1st, so all I had to do was find a place with an imme­di­ate vacancy and move in. I made an appoint­ment with the com­plex I wanted to move into last year but couldn’t quite pull together the money. The plan was to sign the new lease Sat­ur­day morn­ing and start mov­ing my stuff over there. I’d planned to move in August any­way, and this way meant I could spend the sum­mer in a new place with cen­tral air (my cur­rent digs faces south­west and has two barely func­tional wall units, so it bakes in sum­mer afternoons).

On Sat­ur­day morn­ing, I woke up and did what I do every morn­ing on wak­ing up. I grabbed my phone and checked my email. I noticed an insuf­fi­cient funds notice from my bank, and thought, “That shouldn’t be pos­si­ble. Yes­ter­day was pay­day, and I have all that tax refund money left.” So I got up and went to the desk­top com­puter to bet­ter take a look at my bank web­site and fig­ure out what was up. And there, plain as day, was the prob­lem. All my money was gone. Just van­ished, poof!

I called my bank and they told me there was a court-​ordered hold on my account. They didn’t have much more info and won’t until Tues­day, as Monday’s a fed­eral hol­i­day. They did tell me who the hold was for, which sounded famil­iar. I tracked it down to a law firm here in town that tried to sue me to col­lect on a credit card on which I’d defaulted in my 20s. I called them, and they explained that they hadn’t accepted my pay­ment arrange­ment offer, they’d tried to con­tact me to nego­ti­ate and I hadn’t returned their calls. I don’t remem­ber that hap­pen­ing, but as it’s my pol­icy to screen calls and delete voice­mails unheard from blocked Cal­lerID num­bers, I couldn’t prove them wrong.

So now I’m los­ing my place to live and have no money with which to secure another. And if I really was as alone as I’m sure we all some­times feel in this old life, I’d be well and truly screwed. But as it turns out, that’s not the case.

I’m mov­ing in with my par­ents, and if that doesn’t work out for some rea­son, I have a stand­ing offer from my sis­ter to take me in. A friend gave me enough cash to tide me over until next pay­check (which, though gar­nished, I should be able to access). And friends both here in Den­ver and all across the inter­nets have made sure I know they care and are stand­ing by to help if needed. I may not have my own place, but I have every­thing I really need.

Over the next few months, I’m going to save up as much money as I can to try to both pay off this debt and save up for my own apart­ment. It might take longer than I planned. I might not actu­ally move out on my own again until next spring. But I know I’ll be okay. And I’ve learned, the hard way, that I have to take a more active role in my own life, stay on top of things rather than let­ting them snow­ball out of hand. Maybe this is the time to find a GTD solu­tion I can really stick with. Too­dledo looks promising.

Oh, and yeah, writ­ing. I’ve been dis­tracted this week, and I’m going to be pretty busy for the next two weeks at least. My fic­tion is on hold until I get set­tled, but only until then. I’m going to get back to Home­world in early March, and I’m out­lin­ing another project that I might work on after my Home­world sec­ond draft, or maybe con­cur­rent with it as a change of pace. But the blog­ging will recom­mence imme­di­ately. Microsoft is going to make some excit­ing announce­ments at Mobile World Con­gress in Barcelona this week and I’ve got a few things to say about them. I have my net­book, I have my smart­phone, and there’s no rea­son I can’t keep blog­ging (and tweet­ing) while I move into this next phase in my life. A writer writes. It’s just that simple.