Sick of Begging

I have been blessed with supporters who have appeared and saved me from going down the tubes. I was able to support most of my life with occasional swirls into the drain. The answer of "a roommate" was natural because I have lived with really good roommates for most of my adult life in California (Southern and Northern), Colorado, and Virginia - before North Carolina.

To be fair, I was also in a life habit of moving at least once a year. None of them had to put up with me for all that long, but two of them shared multiple addresses with me and are still in communication willingly.

Long Sad Tale of Roommatery

While some of the niftiest humans I encountered in bulk have lived here, the people presenting themselves as roommates were not of that group.

One day I realized I
could draw myself
with ovals. Honest.

Get your violin tuned up - this is a real tear-jerker. Or at least it has jerks involved.

Candidate #1

One lived with me for a year as a helper when he needed help, and as soon as he was asked to contribute to rent, he vanished. Didn't move out, just - vanished. Later I found to move in with a lovely young prostitute turning tricks for crack and his own inhaled preference. He was gonna pay me, gonna come back to help me... gonna gonna gonna.

I would later refer to this kind of thing as "death by good intentions," or "gonna gonna gonna."

So I did without a roommate for several years. Like - five years.

Candidate #2

Then I met someone who looked like an option and who said he had a job that "started Monday" with a boss who would pick him up for the job. He moved in. Monday came. His boss was sick. His boss wasn't answering his phone messages. He had no one else to call. He never helped around the house. He was gonna, but he was afraid he might wake me up. When I was sitting in the living room. Typing on the computer. I'd ask him if he had done what he said he was going to do that morning in the evening and he answered, "Don't bark at me." This began around Thanksgiving 2017 and after several weeks there were tears - "Please don't throw me out at Christmas." His ex-wife would let him move into the spare room when her holiday guests had gone. One of his daughters would come to pick him up. He would move out to his little piece of land and camp out...

I gave him the date after Christmas, in fact after New Year's, because his boss was doing better... So after New Year's. I gave him the date for rent, even if it wasn't all, and confirmed the place where I met him would take him back. 5PM on the date confirmed. And two days before the date, more tears and negotiating began. And continued to while the guy who had agreed to give him a ride back to where he came from, followed by tears in the car as they drove away, which made that guy think I was a monster.

Until the driver realized what I had realized. Candidate #2 was not a bad guy. This was a guy in the early stages of dementia. He did not remember. He didn't mean to lie, but he could not remember from hour to hour, and every time something was mentioned, it was gone almost as soon as it was out of his mouth or into his ear. Part of it might have been the result of decades of alcohol abuse. The facility where we took him confirmed that amateur diagnosis. They made arrangements to get him into an open facility where he'd have a room, meals, and some supervision for things he couldn't do (like laundry or take showers - made his residency more difficult).

He refused. I do not know where he is or how that played out. He called me a couple of times to tell me he was working. Things were great. His boss picked him up for work, he was living with one of his daughters ... until the tears to let him move back with me.

No. I said no. And I have not heard from him again.

Candidate #3

Last spring another candidate appeared. He had a law enforcement background, talked a good game, agreed to everything I said was a condition of the roomatery.

But things changed quickly. We agreed to at least one shared meal a week to discuss house business and maybe watch something on Netflix. Nope. He got his own Netflix on his laptop almost never came out of his room.

He redefined everything that had been said - he was now "renting a room" and had nothing to do with the rest of the house - I had forgotten. He did help around the house, paid what was to be the cash portion cash of the rent-plus-roomatery, but there was no conversation.

After three months I told him it wasn't working. 30 days notice. He couldn't find a place and the apartments were very expensive. (No shit.) Okay, 60-day notice. At the beginning of August, he again said he couldn't find a place. And was shocked when I said, "90-notice then. I will not extend again."

The new roommate latched onto the dementia of his predecessor and applied it to me. I noticed that the room he cleaned out no longer had things I'm likely to fantasize removing - like some coverless 1940s comic books I intended to keep. Little electronic devices. Then it became "You gave that to me, don't you remember." "I told you that, you must have forgotten." Apply and repeat.

Living with him was like living with a manipulative, sullen 15-year-old, and he when he left he would not put forwarding on his mail. I was not allowed to know where he lived and he changed his phone number. I was able to pass a few things along thru a mutual friend - like his health insurance enrollment cards - for a couple of months. But I decided I was no longer responsible for his mail and started tossing it.

I now have a written Roommatery agreement and will share it with anyone local who is looking for a "shared living" situation and is at least partially compatible. That means conversation almost daily. I have other Territorial Demands for my conquest: Rent (I'm told it is a very fair rent) with about half of that rent is deducted for help around the house with things I cannot do. about 3-hours per week spread through the week.

All cetailed in said document. And most of them are negotiable.

Candidate #4

A Fourth roommate appeared, just before Christmas. Did not have dementia and had a job that started on Tuesday (not Monday) and had transportation. It was Thanksgiving (again) and I let him move in. He brought food and was an eager beaver around the house - but no rent. His boss was sick - in the hospital - and I knew who it was, and he WAS sick and in the hospital. So ... okay. And the job would start right after new years... but he had a job. But his wife took off the restraining order and he wasn't sleeping here.

Just before February, six weeks in, he was working and offered me two of the six weeks rent. Nope. Not gonna do that. Three, then. No. You owe six whether you were sleeping here or not. Get yer stuff. The food he brought was not mine, so I did not eat it. I think he wanted that to count in lieu of rent. Do you know how hard it is to get Duke Energy to accept a sweet potato casserole for the increase in electric?

Candidate #5

I have been trying. I met this one guy while helping a local vets group get together. Candidate #5 was an excellent option. We struck it off immediately. We got work done! We had a great rapport, but he's on the Registry and the county deputies would not let him move in because I live within 1,000 of a piece of property that also owns a school. The school is not within the 1000 feet, but the church that owns it is doing a commercial subdivision. The church is in a business venture, so I can't have him as a roommate.

Don't get me started on abuses of the "church and state" clause.

There are a couple of others who might work out, but they have no transportation. The closest bus stop is three miles away (as the crow drives - a 1996 Crown Vic), which is a little extreme for hoofing it to the bus stop through flood and snow. Uphill both ways. (It might not be true but it would be great to tell the grandkids.)

Even with a job, that was a bad match.

Candidate #6

Candidate #6 HAD a transportation arrangement - with Candidate #5, who the Deputies would not let move in - but he is on the Registry, too.

DAMN IT, MAN!

Candidate #5 shows up several times a week and has been much better roommate than #1-#4. More helpful than any of the supposed roommates I've had sleeping here (or claimed to be sleeping here). I think you call that a "new friend," but friendship goes both ways and I'll have to see if I live up to my end.

The Expanding Universe (of Bills)

My rent went up in January. When I moved in it was $125 a month for lot rent. It is now $390 a month. It has been fifteen years, but in that same 15 years, my income increased by $130, with increases in my medical insurance copay (everybody thinks I get for free) that outclassed my COLA inceases. My electric bill went from $73 in December 2017, to $128 in January 2018, to $193 in January of 2019 - this is March of 2019 if you weren't looking.

February was the worst month to date. It wiped out the last of my reserve and my ability to fancy dance. One guy (an old roommate, oddly enough) put up some money on my PayPal account to replace what couldn't be replaced after paying the increased bills and trying to catch up on the bills that didn't get covered while Roommate #4 was in place (or claiming to take up space). And two more have helped with deliveries of fast-food and gas (unrelated - one a put gas in the car).

Three people helped while I have gone through my fourth Cancer scare (declared "pre-cancerous," but aren't most of us?). I just went through my first time ever encounter with pneumonia. I have COPD so bronchitis and asthma all the damn time, and pollen season just arrived for my allergies, but pneumonia knocked even my considerable butt down for a couple of weeks. And hasn't quite cleaned out all its stuff. From my nose and sinuses. My doctor got me on antibiotics immediately, ordered me to bed, I missed my class last week (a friend sat in for me). Feeling better is visible on the horizon, if not yet firmly at harbor at the dock.

This week, while I was sick and not opening the fridge much, my refrigerator died and I have not yet been able to come up with a replacement cold box, other than a bag of ice a friend delivered tonight. It keeps my insulin cold. The odor of several cubit feet of rot is almost gone.

Another favorite bit of graphic design.

I do fairly good graphic design so I'm going to try to beat the bushes for a couple of those assignments. Nor more web pages, but graphics for branding, logos, book pre-press, and other assists with new businesses. I also do book and publication design, retouch damaged photos and have been known to repurpose vintage art for modern pieces. Details on request (or look up some samples of logos, with maps, graphics, repurposing vintage designs and more on Facebook as "Joe the Geek").

The saving grace over the previous year was I was making about $50 a month with support from subscriptions to a private RPG newsletter that I committed for twelve issues. I'm at issue twelve, now late. I do everything to finish what I commit to. But my model tried to get 50 subscribers worldwide, but I wound up with 20.

And one subscriber said I sounded like I didn't appreciate my subscribers. Damn. I truly do, but I was also disappointed. I think that leaked out. But I still appreciate them - enough that I am fulfilling my commitment and, as I feel is appropriate, a bit more.

The Sick of Begging Part

So to get onto the non-begging channel I am considering opening my first Patreon attempt. Some people out there seem to make enough to support such a thing. The goals will be levels of getting out of this pit with projects in the new electrical interweb. I have some projects I do to try to make money in sales through Amazon, but I have a number of projects that do not lend themselves to traditional marketing, but which some people might like to set let loose on the world through the Creative Commons Share Alike, Do Not Sell, Full Attribution license. Free to download, free to share.

I have about a dozen of those up on archive.org if you are interested. I posted links in an earlier blog entry.

In fact I have a number of related projects related to PTSD, surviving ACE (Adverse Childhood Events), damaged personality development, the history and abuse of Propaganda (like modern advertising and political campaigns), Griefwork, the history of Slaveries (there was more than one), and other topics related to self-help and self-education. The primary outlet for those will be YouTube. I've done radio for many years, I was involved with print for most of my life, so the videoes will be a logical extrapolation of my communication obsession.

Some people might be willing to support such a channel for $4 or so per month subscription for advance notice of my output and where to find them, or one-time donation to go on that list, or maybe someone could help me put together a grant for developing those videos and related projects.

I'll talk about that next week. I've boo-hoo'd enough for this entry. Maybe too much.