One month ago today, I heaved a big sigh of relief. After a difficult season of somewhat abbreviated paychecks, family health issues, a great time at the Wichita convention that cost us a chunk out of pocket to attend… our finances were finally moving the right direction. While we were heading into the holidays with a very limited budget, bills were being paid and we had a little breathing room. When Christmas weekend rolled around, my wife Jonikka and made the trek back to Kansas to spend the holiday with friends and family. We lingered for a time, ringing in the new year with camaraderie and a sense of relative contentment.
When we were on our way home on January 4th, we received the call. My wife’s contract with her employer – which should have given us another six months of rebuilding and finally being able to put money away – had been terminated. We were officially adrift, fluid enough to make it through the end of the month.
As often happens in our lives – so much so that it’s virtually a meme in our family – disaster accompanied opportunity. Just a few hours before receiving the call, a close friend had heard us waxing on about how much further my wife’s salary would stretch if we moved back to Kansas, and my sister-in-law had proposed that a new medication on the market might very well be the solution to Jonikka’s lower-altitude health concerns. Said friend offered to procure us a home, paying a rent that is only a fraction of our current commitment in Colorado Springs.
So with hearts a bit heavy, we prepare to bid farewell to our mountain home, with every intention of returning some day soon. The boxes are already starting to pile up around me as a write this, capturing the contents of our apartment with efficient cardboard sterility. We have two weeks to pack and clean, load our belongings into our cars and a massive uHaul, and make the voyage back to Kansas. Our coffers are dwindling. The cost of the move is staggering. Jonikka continues to look for work as I do my best to bring in a comparatively paltry sum. Our debts, while not insurmountable, are burdensome, and supporting a family of four beyond the next few weeks with our current resources is, in a word, unrealistic.
Invariably, things will work out. We have a seriously uncanny way of emerging from hardship with surprisingly few scars. That doesn’t make the interim any easier, of course, and while I want to be hopeful… well, it bleeds the energy right out of you.
A month ago, when I was heaving that sigh, I was staring at the arbitrary start of the new year with aspiration and a bit of hope. 2024 would be the year I finished the next book. I had plans for my podcasts and my Patreon supporters, and I was thinking about heading to Kickstarter with another gaming project. I was lining out ways to address the damage to our credit in the wake of the Pandemic, and we were starting to talk about buying a car and working toward a house.
That phone call was a serious kick in the teeth.
But we have each other. We have amazing friends and family that have helped where they can. We have games that bring us joy, and my projects – while on a temporary hold – continue to tantalize me with their possibilities. I am optimistic about the next adventure, no matter the hardship, because perseverance is inevitably the greatest tool in our collective utility belt.
And there’s one other thing I want to acknowledge. Over the years, my wife and I have striven to be the kind of friends who help anyone we can. We’ve opened our home and our pantry, our wallets when we could – sometimes even when we couldn’t – and the karmic elevation of that devotion to showing love and respect to those around us is paying off in dividends. It’s not a reward for good behavior – the reward, conspicuously enough, was caring for others – but rather a reminder that your kindness and compassion has a way of being revisited upon you when the need is there.
Good morrow, friends. Wherever you are, we’ll see you soon.
