{"id":206,"date":"2024-01-15T20:25:04","date_gmt":"2024-01-15T20:25:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/endoftheday.prismatictsunami.com\/?p=206"},"modified":"2024-01-15T20:25:04","modified_gmt":"2024-01-15T20:25:04","slug":"echoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/endoftheday.prismatictsunami.com\/?p=206","title":{"rendered":"Echoes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That phone call was a serious kick in the teeth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good morrow, friends. Wherever you are, we’ll see you soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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 … Continue reading Echoes<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-206","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-philosophy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s3XDKu-echoes","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/endoftheday.prismatictsunami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/endoftheday.prismatictsunami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/endoftheday.prismatictsunami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/endoftheday.prismatictsunami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/endoftheday.prismatictsunami.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=206"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/endoftheday.prismatictsunami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":209,"href":"https:\/\/endoftheday.prismatictsunami.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/206\/revisions\/209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/endoftheday.prismatictsunami.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/endoftheday.prismatictsunami.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/endoftheday.prismatictsunami.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}