Coming Into Money

Over two years of harness-free euphoria

This is a continuation of my story, Jobs, Unemployment and Ice Cream Cones. That story was about employment, unemployment and self-employment and the roller coaster ride my life has been between those life situations. The reader may come away from that story with the idea that I am a lazy slacker who hates to work and whose poverty is self-inflicted and well deserved. While there may be a modicum of truth to that, it is not the whole story. I left out a very important chunk of that story and I will now endeavor to fill in that huge, gaping blank.

No, I have certainly not been poor my whole life. Far from it. For one thing, during most of those 15 years of self-employment my income was substantially greater than that derived from any of the seemingly hundreds of low-paying jobs I’ve had. I got to experience being middle-class, with my 3-person family, two cars in the driveway, money in the bank, and all the perks associated with a middle-class existence in America. But that is not what I am talking about. That is not the blank that I am trying to fill in.

You see, once upon a time I actually struck it rich!

‘Rich,’ of course, is a relative term. Some of your relatives might be richer than others. But to me I truly felt like I struck it rich.

It happened about six and a half years ago. According to my doctor I wasn’t even supposed to be alive at the time. Almost a year beforehand I was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer and he told me I had 6 months to live but if I were to undergo very intense chemotherapy I might be able to stretch that out to a year.

I told my doctor to go fuck himself (literally) and I walked out of the hospital never to return and never to undergo chemotherapy or any other treatment. I went home and began healing myself. Now, over 7 years later I am still 100% cancer-free.

While my self-healing regimen was multi-faceted, one of the major components of my healing involved bringing myself into vibrational alignment with the Universe. Before snorting derisively at that comment please bear with me. I learned that aligning vibrationally with the Universe can help heal anything, including cancer. And anyone can do it.

I spent several months totally focused on healing the mental, physical and spiritual aspects of myself. Luckily, I was still collecting unemployment at the time from the last job I had been laid off from. Technically, I should have been looking for a job that whole time but I didn’t have time for that nonsense. I was too busy healing and aligning and re-learning how to thoroughly love life. I was given a second chance and I was firmly taking it. Within a few months I was healthier than I’ve ever been. And happier, too.

I learned that being in vibrational alignment with the Universe is not only great for healing but it is also great for striking it rich. The fact that I am currently in a state of temporary poverty is testament to the fact that I am currently somewhat misaligned. In attempting to re-align I am thinking back to that time when I was in full alignment in hopes of seeing what I’m doing wrong now.

Anyway, back at that time I was healing and aligning and I also started writing more again. My writing production had dwindled down to a trickle during my bout with cancer. And there was a novel stuck in my noggin that was screaming to get out.

So I started writing that novel despite the fact that I only had a couple months left of unemployment benefits. I really, really needed to start looking for a job. But I didn’t. I was too busy healing and aligning and writing.

One day, while in a state of supreme vibrational alignment with the Universe I asked the Universe to send me some money so that I wouldn’t have to get a job and so that I could focus entirely on that novel that was beginning to consume me.

About a week after I got my last unemployment benefits payment I went to check my mail. Inside my mailbox was an envelope and inside that envelope was a check made out to me for over forty thousand dollars!

I had struck it rich!

Now many people would not consider a check for that amount to be striking it rich. For a lot of people that isn’t even a year’s worth of income. But for me it was definitely striking it rich. I had never held a check that big in my hands before. By “that big” I am referring to the dollar amount and not the actual size of the check. I’ve never held one of those giant cardboard checks you see on TV before — although that might be fun.

A sane, smart, critical-thinking, forward-thinking, logical person would invest a large chunk of that money; in a business or in real estate or in stocks or bonds or some kind of investment that would create a return on that investment in the future. With retirement looming on the horizon a sane, smart, critical-thinking, forward-thinking, logical person of my age would have invested a large chunk of that money in some sort of retirement fund.

Did I do any of those things? OH, HELL NO! I’m not a sane, smart, critical-thinking, forward-thinking, logical person!

I used that money to do something that I have dreamed about doing all my life!

First, though, I paid off all my debt — a few thousand dollars. Then I bought a car. I hadn’t had a car in a little over five years — ever since I lost my job at that factory and I had to sell the car I had then in order to pay the rent. I’ve had all sorts of different vehicles over the course of my life but I had never had a gas-guzzling SUV and I wanted one. So for five grand I bought a used Ford Explorer which I quickly fell in love with. It turned out to be the best car I’ve ever had.

At this point I was down to about 34 grand. At the time I was living in a government housing project paying almost no rent due to my status as a cancer patient. The big check suddenly made me ineligible to live there so I had to find a place to live. I quickly found a delightful little upstairs apartment downtown in the very best location. I paid the entire first year’s rent in advance (got a 5% discount for doing that) and moved in and quickly set up my desk.

At this point I was down to around 28 grand. I stuck it in my checking account and drew from it for living expenses like food and utilities and eventually rent after that first year. And I commenced to live very, very frugally in order to make that 28 grand last as long as possible.

You see, my life-long dream was to be able to write full-time WITHOUT needing to have a freaking job. And now I was suddenly living my dream — at least until the money ran out.

28 grand might not seem like a lot of money but I lived on that money for almost two and a half years. That comes out to a little over ten thousand dollars a year that I lived on and that is considered living below the poverty line. I had plenty of money but, as I said, I lived very, very frugally as if I were poor.

But I felt so very, very rich! I was living my dream. I was a FULL-TIME writer and I wrote like a maniac. I awoke each day before dawn and then after my sunrise ceremonies I would have breakfast then sit down at my desk and start writing. I would stop for lunch then go on a nature hike for an hour and a half to two hours. Then I would write for the rest of the afternoon before taking a break for dinner and a short sunset walk then I would write for the rest of the evening. I was writing between 12 and 15 hours a day. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY!

I finished that novel I started and wrote two more. Plus I wrote countless short stories and essays. My output during those glorious two and a half years almost matches the output for all the rest of the years of my life combined.

Those two and a half years were just about the happiest two and a half years of my life. I was so deliriously happy! I was living in a state seemingly perpetual euphoria. I was actually doing what I had always dreamed of doing. I was in heaven. I was utterly fulfilled.

But money has a nasty tendency to get depleted and run out. After the two-year mark of living my dream I was a little more than half finished with my third novel. The balance in my checkbook was looking very scary. I didn’t want to put that third novel on hold in order to get a freaking job so I sold my beloved Explorer in order to pay for a few more months of rent.

The hope was for the revenue from my novels to provide income to keep writing but that never happened. After finishing the third novel the inevitable finally happened. The money ran out and I had to get a fucking job.

Now, four years later, I am still at that job. And I haven’t written a single novel during the last four years. I currently have at least three novels stuck in my noggin that want out. Trying to write a novel while holding down a job — a couple hours here, a couple hours there — totally sucks. And it can take years. I prefer to devote myself completely to whatever story is using me as a conduit to come forth.

Writing full-time is no longer a dream because I have already lived it. Now it is something that I desperately want to RETURN TO. I once again want to live in that euphoric state of joy.

I obviously need to once again get into vibratory alignment with the Universe.

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Here is Part One of this two-part story: