Detritus

It’s October!

Fantasy Fest is upon us once more!

I can’t believe it’s been an entire year since I was last writing about Fantasy Fest. Time flies so fast when you get older, I honestly don’t know where it all goes.

I have been so insanely busy the last few weeks I don’t know which way is up. We started construction of the Haunted Fort on October 1, and that pretty much sucked 90% of my free time right off the top. Then there was the Vampire’s Ball last Saturday the 23rd, a one-night party out at the fort. We had a costume contest, a DJ, and of course lots of fog and blacklights.. a good time was had by all!

The remaining 10% of my free time this month has gone to a couple of freelance graphics jobs I picked up. They couldn’t have come at a more hectic time, but it’s nice to have some side work to get me out of the rut of the daily office-grind, and re-affirm my abilities as a graphic artist.

Doing freelance work is something I’ve never seriously considered before. I’ve always had opportunities, but turned them down because heck, I was making bank at my big corporate job, and couldn’t be bothered with the annoyance of working on “my” time.

Now I have a pitiful income from a job I honestly would not miss one bit were it gone, and I’m beginning to think I could support myself by doing graphics. Heck if I charged half of what most people charge for freelance work, I could bring home the same money  as I’m getting from my current job each week, for only half the hours of work. Of course.. finding that much work and keeping it is problematic.

I just don’t know what to do with myself.

Christina gets frustrated with me because I can’t just go to work and not get emotionally involved with it. I can’t seem to keep my issues at work from affecting my day-to-day happiness, but then I’ve never been one to go into something halfway. I’m in or I’m out, and riding the fence is supremely frustrating for me.  I need to believe in what I’m doing, otherwise it just feels like a waste of time.

The work I do is simple enough (maybe too much so), and it should just be something I can just do and not let it get to me, but I’m afraid that I’m discovering over time that my boss and I are of different ilks, and interfacing with him daily is testing the boundaries of my patience. But that could probably describe most folk’s relationships with their bosses, huh?It’s time for a change, I just don’t know what that is yet. Maybe freelancing is the answer, maybe working the drive-through at Wendy’s is, I don’t know. We’ll find out, but not today.

Anyhoo, I Digress!

It’s Fantasy Fest week, and there are lots and lots of events on the horizon. We have a few friends coming into town this week, some of which are staying with Christina and I. We’re pulling out the futon, blowing up the air mattress, and may even resort to drawing straws to see who sleeps on the front porch.. haha. I’m sure by the time we’re heading to sleepy land each night, it won’t matter where we wind up as long as it’s horizontal.

I’ll be sure to get some good photos and post them for everyone’s perusal!

Let the madness begin!

Woah!

Where does the time go? Amazing how when you’re just livin’ life it seems to slip by unnoticed. I can’t believe it’s been so long since I posted anything here. I have photos and stuff from some really fun Duval St. events.. Lobester Fest 2010 and the Running of the Bulls that I need to throw up on here… guess I’d better get on that huh.

I don’t know what happened, it’s like I hit my one year mark in Key West and blacked out. Now it’s almost September and I don’t know where the last two months went! My son Connor was down visiting from NY for a month in there, so that probably had a lot to do with it. We went camping up in Bahia Honda state park one weekend, that was un-freaking-believably beautiful. I’ll post some shots of that too here in a bit. Most of the rest of our time together we spent on the beach or watching movies or eating. He loves visiting me because he says I’m a better cook than his mother, and he gets to eat better when he’s down here. Hey, I’ll take what I can get!

Christina and Connor both had birthdays in the beginning of August, so we had two separate birthday dinners. Christina’s happened to coincide with Lobester Fest, so of course we had lobster! Well, Connor had crab legs, but Christina and I ate the bug. We went to the Half-Shell Raw Bar over on the marina.. the food was pretty darned good, the atmosphere was steamy, and the beer was cold. Can’t complain one bit! For Connor’s birthday we went to Turtle Kraals, and had MORE lobster and crab legs. Im up in the air about Turtle Kraals’ food still. I’ve been 4 times now, and sometimes it’s really good, sometimes not so much. Maybe it’s just some things on the menu are better than others. It’s definitely no Conch Republic Sea Food though.

Other than that I’ve just been working for the man like the dog I am. This being the off-season, sales are way down, and the mood in the gallery is pretty.. I don’t know.. grim? I’m sure we’ll pull out of it, but man.. as if work isn’t stressful enough, we gotta add money woes on top. I sit at my computer and dream of the day when I can support myself off of my sculpture. Of course, this dream requires me actually SELLING some of it, but hey.. one thing at a time.

Speaking of the sculpture thing, that’s going really well. I was contacted a few months back by a gentleman in the steampunk-art world who puts on a yearly gallery show up in Connecticut. He had run across my coppersteam blog and was interested in placing some of my work in his show next year. COOL! Recently he contacted me again and wants to include photos of my sculpture in a coffee table book he’s putting together consisting of steampunk art. Even cooler! Needless to say, I’m excited about all that. I never expected to just have people come knocking on my door.

Anyways, just thought I’d better let whoever might actually read this thing know that I’m not dead or in jail. I’ll post some photos soon of the recent tropical misadventures!

Cheers!
Mike

The Big One-Oh

Just a little bit over 2 years ago..

… maybe closer to three, Christina and I made a ten-year plan. We decided that come hell or high water, we would be living on a sailboat in the Caribbean somewhere.. preferably the Virgin Islands. The plan was to work for the next 5 years in Orlando, save our pennies, and then move to Key West where we would spend 5 years learning to sail, buy a boat, and then sail off to St. Thomas. Easy!

Then Disaster struck. The economy tanked. Christina got laid off. A few months later I got laid off. Our yearly household income went from a comfortably ridiculous sum to just about nothing in the course of a few months.We both struggled to find work, but the outlook was bleak. Christina picked up some temp work during the week, and worked at Macey’s on the weekend.. she worked 7 days a week. I was lucky enough to get a very cushy severance package so I was pretty much living the high life and looking in vain for jobs I knew weren’t there, and wouldn’t be for many years to come.

One day on a lark, Christina applied for a job in Key West over the internet. Long story short, within a month we were moving. We sold just about everything we had, rented out the house, and hit the road. She at least had a job, and a decent one at that, I was still frantically searching. That was one year ago today. We are now 3 years ahead of our schedule thanks to the economic collapse.

I’ve since found employment. It’s a sweet little job. No stress to speak of. No team meetings, no performance reviews, no managerial duties; no corporate bullshit whatsoever. It takes me 3 minutes to commute to work on my bike. The worst traffic I get on the way is in the form of a family of chickens crossing the road or perhaps a curious, big green lizard. My job pays less than half of what I was making in Orlando but you know what? I wouldn’t go back to that life for all the money in the world.

We spend Saturdays at the beach, which is  less than a mile from our apartment. We relish the lack of the yard work and house work that it took to keep up with a 3-bedroom house in the ‘burbs. I spend my free time building my sculptures, writing in my blogs, and sitting at Dante’s enjoying a corona in the beautiful Key West sun with friends.

It’s a much simpler lifestyle

And I look forward to the continuation of our descent into simplicity. We’ll be starting sailing classes soon, and then it’s on to phase two of the plan. If things continue at this accelerated pace, we should be well on our way to being permanent beach bums well short of our planned timeframe.

I’d like to take a brief second here to say thanks to all the new friends we’ve met in Key West who have made us feel welcome and helped in the transition. Frank, Eric and Kelly, Moose and Danyle, Momma Frank, Aunt Ruth and Wayne, Frank II, Jocomo… you guys are the best, I couldn’t have asked for a better group of people to hang with. I look forward to all the future misadventures we will certainly share!

We left 20-something years worth of friends behind in Orlando, as well as a fair amount of family. It was a rough break, but the internet and frequent visits from folks who have figured out that having friends in Key West with a free futon can be a good thing, have made the transition not quite so bad.

Here’s to the next phase of the plan! I wonder what I’ll be writing about this time next year….

M

Digging in the Dirt

I’ve decided to repost all of my “Mike Needs a Life” blog here for the amusement and edification of everyone involved (Mostly me). I haven’t read any of this since I started this Conch Tales blog, and that was almost a year ago. And it’s been almost 2 years since I got laid off in the first place and started blogging about my life to try to find some direction after being thrown into a tailspin by corporate malaise.

It’s pretty amusing to read, at least for me, because as I look back over these old posts, I realize that my outlook on life has been significantly altered in the time between the great layoff and now.

This stuff is all pre-Conch Tales, and as such, is kind of a different voice, but you can definitely see the events that lead to this blog being created. It’s probably going to take me a few days at least to get these all posted, so check back to the link below if you’re interested in reading them; they won’t post here on the front page because I’m posting them with their original dates, so that they fall in behind all of the current Conch Tales stuff.

I’ve put them all in their own catagory here: http://www.conchtales.com/category/mnal/ They’re numbered and of course in true blog fashion, you have to read from bottom to top to go in order.

Read on, and I hope you enjoy them as much as I did!

The Simonton Slut

This cat cracks me up. She comes out every afternoon and works the sidewalk in front of our apartment. I’m not sure where she lives, but I’m pretty sure it’s in the crack-house boarding house next door to us.

She lounges on the sidewalk all afternoon and gets more attention that Pope John Paul on easter sunday. I’ve never seen a cat work the crowds like this little beauty does… not a single local nor tourist can resist her wiles. Everyone stops to pet her. EVERYONE.  I’m deathly allergic to cats and I stop every day to show her the love.. I just can’t resist, she is such a sweetheart.

I think this cat just may be a wizard in disguise… Gandalf after falling into the pit.. Yoda after fading away.. Ronny James Dio reincarnated…  I don’t know, but there are supernatural powers at play here, and I for one am not taking any chances! RUB THE BUDDHA!

Key West definitely has it’s share of cultural icons.. the jogging guy in the red hat.. WOO HOO!.. Magic Frank.. Captain Tony.. Mongo.. and this cat. Better get used to it, there’s a new sheriff in town!

Definitely stop by and give her a chin scratch, your day will go much better if you do!