I’m pretty sure my best friends, who have been along with me on the most tedious journey these past 3 1/2 years, would really like me to go ahead and give more details on what the heck I’m on to now. But it kind of feels like a disservice to me not to pay homage of sorts to the version of me that spent an incredibly long time trying to figure out my next chapter.
As it is mid-March, perhaps it’s appropriate to pay tribute to the new versions of everyone that evolved as the pandemic became a reality. Personally, had I not been forced to evaluate our lack of financial resiliency in the face of economic instability – I probably would have fought my board a lot harder when things went to hell in a handbasket.
To spend three years slogging it out and then walk away just when I had gotten to the point where we were on the cusp of great things really sucked. We had a preapproval for a 1+ million dollar NSF grant for a multi-year joint project with Northark Community College. We were plaintiffs in a lawsuit with Animal Legal Defense Fund and Food and Water Watch addressing improper permitting and regulations of large poultry houses. And then there was the most gut-wrenching thing to let go of, which was finally getting Lewis and Clark Law Clinic on board to take up my litigation against EPA. That would have had drastic implications for Arkansas water quality laws and regulations. And when I say “we,” I mean “I.” I did those things. I had spent three years writing comments and building a membership that gave me the legal standing to win those cases. There was so much other impactful shit that I was doing in between. But the fact those big picture snowballs got blasted off the mountains just as they were gaining momentum… I’m not sure if I will ever stop thinking about what could’ve been. The amount of perseverance that it took to get to that place. Man, I will always admire that about myself. And I’ll probably always be a little sad that I didn’t get to see it through.
Wherever you are, Mike and Elva, I hope you are blessed with chronic hemorrhoids and hard poops for the rest of your crusty lives.
But alas, here we are. Regardless of the great things I was on the precipice of with my nonprofit, I was still probably far from anywhere close to making a living wage. And having all of that time before me to think, “What the hell am I gonna do next?” Whatever it was, I knew I needed to build something that did not require me to trade my time for money constantly. And though I had absolutely no idea what my next career move would be, it did not stop me from spending the next year busting my ass to recession-proof our lives.
And frankly, the insane ways that I drastically decreased our debt burden deserve at least one whole post of its own. Yeah, Patrick may have been the one who spent years saying we should live in a camper. But I knew damn well he wasn’t cut out for that. He still deserves plenty of credit for going along with it, though. But I was the one that made that happen.
More on the camper days soon.
[…] earning potential, I knew that I would have to be the one to turn things around. In fairness to me, as I mentioned in a previous post, at this point, when I was consumed with existential dread, I was making great strides to catapult […]