At the end of 2013, our company received a project that would yield enough income to do the Permanent Resident papers to bring my wife over to live with me in Canada. A month went by and the client wanted to redo the entire design of the site. So I spent countless hours and days doing the site he wanted just so he could go MIA on us. Then a couple of weeks went by and I was contacted by someone from the client’s company.
To make a long and angry story short, the client lead us along for ten months until I decided to pull the plug on their hosting. It was a classic case of million-dollar corporation threatening small start-up with lawsuit and for absolutely no good reason. I assumed we had a contract in place which one of my partners eventually told me that none existed after prodding him for the third time. In the week I pulled the plug on their hosting, the client came back with their managerial staff and told my partner they will pay us the full amount owed to us.
The year of constantly broken hopes, dragging my feet and limbs doing the project hoping that the client would honor our initial agreement and come through to pay us damaged me on the inside. I didn’t say this to any of my friends, nor did I share any of this to anyone else besides my mom because I knew no one would truly see nor understand how this affected me. They would just listen and then give some generic advice I can tell myself. I’m not the business guy in the company. I am the creative consultant and producer and the year had created a certain type of temper inside of me. The year’s worth of tiny ups and massive downs had forged massive skepticism.
Don’t count your chicks before they have hatched.
Back in November, I announced on Facebook that if the client pays us within the next two weeks, I would look out my window to look for flying pigs. The client did not pay us within those two weeks, BUT the client did pay us a month after I made that announcement. Not only did that client finally pay us, but another client paid us and then an older client from my freelancing days called me and had me working for her on a contractual part-time basis.
What was a very bad year ended with ultra good news. Though money is now coming in steadily, I don’t look at it as being luck but more so a life-long ordeal of not doing things on-time and not-making goals, then being punished for it even if I did make all of those deadlines in 2014. The thing is, I worked hard and I worked long hours and it helped screw up my body.
I know my friends, especially Laura will never let me forget about my ‘liver problem’, but it’s a real problem amongst other things. Alcoholism helped make it worse, the long nights without sleep, restless sleep, pain killers, mental and emotional stress, heightened anxiety and my lingering depression. Though I have quit drinking for over a year and have only had a beer or a glass of wine once every half a year for the last two years, sometimes, I do crave it. Actually, I crave it almost every day. A couple of shots of Bombay Sapphire Gin on ice or Glenfidditch on ice. I miss the taste and the emotions that swelled up from them.
The year was a hard one, but I made more than double the amount of money I made in 2014 than I did in 2013. In 2015, I hope to make more than I did in 2014, but I know it will take all the effort on a timely basis on my part as it did in 2014 and more.
Which brings me to the next thing. Someone somewhere out there told me that I am a late boomer. At nearly thirty six, I am considered still a ‘teen’ in her eyes. Of course, she’s so much more ancient than any of us combined, but I don’t see her for her age. I see her for her wisdom. She is measured by her wisdom. She has guided me for so long, but there has been times where I ‘left’ to seek out answers on my own. To find my own way. To try to connect with other ideals and human-made policies. In the end, I came back to her. How could I not? I’ve known her for all of my life and it wasn’t until about fourteen years ago that I opened myself up to her. There is only one other person who knows her, but he is no longer with me and I strongly doubt he is with her either.
With that said, while others need strong acknowledgements to lead them through life, I only need a sort of light to shine my path in life. It doesn’t need to shine the exact path, nor does it have to spell it out for me. Life is what I make of it. The purpose of my life is how I deal with. The world is my canvas. In her dimly lit glow amongst the infinite paths I can take, she is there to help me see what can be done and how I could do them.
What makes this so much more grand is that in that darkness lit dimly by her, is that there is always someone else I can count on to help me see the paths I take clearer. This other person is mortal and she reminds me the fragility of life. She reminds me how I am human and she brings me something I had never really allowed into my heart. She brought me love. She is my wife. She is Amber. She is my sunshine. She is the other light that beings me warmth, that kisses my face when I am down. With Her help, I found my wife a third way around the planet seeking a way to escape her wretched past. I found her, a cocoon that hides a beautiful soul, a lovely woman who understands me and accepts me, even through all of my mortal flaws.
Yet, we are still over eight thousand five kilometres apart. We speak on VSee and Skype almost every day. We have verbal disagreements every now and then. We play games together online. We watch movies at the same time, sometimes. We celebrate each others’ birthdays by being on camera and dressed up for our online dates. We send lots of Whatsapp messages, mail each other gifts, send each other pictures. The thing is, what we need is each other in person, together, here. We need to go on with life, get our careers going, build our money up, buy a house, start a family, do things.
This year is my chance. This year is a year I will work harder, put more effort and thought into. This year is the year that will move me from being a ‘teen’ and into an ‘adult’ in Her eyes. I need not prove my worth. I just need to prove to myself that I can be more and I know I am more.
Thank you, to both of you for accepting me and taking me in when I wandered out there alone. There are others I would thank too, but I am sure they already know.
♥