Ornoth

I haven’t posted anything about the Covid-19 pandemic other than one brief update at its onset. Now that our lockdown has spanned a full year, I should probably document how it’s been.

Our active social life

Although it’s not as if I haven’t written about it… When the virus was two months old, I had an update ready to publish; but with the pandemic story continuing to evolve each week, we never reached a good point to stop and summarize.

Six months in, I revisited that draft and added a framing story, showing how our lives had evolved from pre-Covid, to onset, and then to longer-term steady-state. But that too never saw the light of day.

Now it’s been a year, and I still don’t feel I can do the subject justice. On one hand, what little I have to say seems like the mundane, everyday trivialities of spending a year as a shut-in.

On the other hand, it’s difficult to put the stress and unease into words that convey what it’s been like, knowing that outside our 1,200-square-foot apartment a quarter billion people have contracted this novel, insidious disease, leaving 3 million people dead in its still-reverberating wake.

So let me guide you through a year of life under the pandemic, chronologically, step by step. I apologize in advance for any repetitiveness.

For the full experience, you might choose to begin with my initial March 2020 blogpost entitled “Miles Away From Ordinary,” which describes our outlook at the time of the initial lockdown.

Two months later, in mid-May 2000, I wrote the following:

We’re now ten weeks into our Coronavirus quarantine. How has it gone?

Over two months, I’ve gone outside for one grocery run, three long walks, three short walks, and that’s about it. Outdoor cycling hasn’t happened at all, save for one brief excursion to observe the Ride of Silence. We haven’t picked up restaurant food or had any delivered. I’ve had to defer my plan to recreate my family’s spaghetti sauce due to ingredient shortages and lack of freezer space, but have happily added burritos to my cooking repertoire.

After taking a 10 percent hit to my net worth, I’m about 50% recovered financially. I’m surprised that the stock market bounced back so readily and hasn’t re-tested its March lows. Aside from stocks, I’ve happily got a couple CDs earning a healthy 2.2% and 2.8% that don’t mature for another year; a rare victory over interest rates which have dropped to zero.

Given the widespread economic damage done during the lockdown, I fully expect more pain to come, and a drawn-out recovery, with some sectors (e.g. retail, restaurants, live sports & entertainment, travel & tourism) having to make radical changes before consumers will return.

There’s growing calls to end the lockdown and allow businesses to open, which doesn’t make any sense to me. Two thousand Americans are dying every day due to Covid-19. The virus has killed more Americans in the past two months than all U.S. casualties in the entire Vietnam War. And the death toll is projected to increase to 3,000 Americans per day by June.

Everyone is relieved that we have managed to “flatten the curve”, ensuring that peak simultaneous cases don’t overwhelm our medical capacity and giving researchers time to work on a vaccine. But no one seems to have picked up that flattening the curve also means extending its duration, lengthening the period of time it might take for the overall population to become exposed to the virus and develop herd immunity.

The basic scenario hasn’t changed one bit in the past two months. There are more than a million carriers walking around our country — with thirty thousand more infected every day — and those are only the ones with obvious symptoms! We still have no treatment and are months-to-years away from a preventative vaccine, and we’re only testing a microscopic subset of the population. We have no idea whether individuals who survive gain future immunity to Covid-19, but there's anecdotal evidence that people can indeed become re-infected.

Yet people seem to think the danger has passed and we should relax the restrictions that have successfully limited the virus’ spread so far. I don’t care if you’re dipping into your savings or feeling “quarantine fatigue”; why did we order people to stay at home in the first place if we’re just going to turn around and rescind that order at the precise moment when the infection rate and death count are both at their peak?

To those protesting against our nation’s efforts to reduce the impact of the pandemic, I say: Every generation of Americans has had to make sacrifices to defend this country; but today’s prima donna “patriots” are so soft and self-absorbed that they can't even handle being asked to go home and sit tight for a few weeks. To those clamoring for bars and restaurants to re-open I say: you people are shortsighted, selfish, and pathetic.

Irrespective of what our government advises, I plan on being extremely conservative in resuming normal life. I’m not itching to hit the local restaurants, visit friends and relatives, see any shows, or travel. While I miss biking outdoors, I don’t want to ride anywhere near other people, especially anyone who hasn’t taken the danger seriously.

My goal, more than anything, is to avoid this virus as long as I can, in hopes that eventually progress will be made toward detection, treatment, and prevention. But that hasn’t happened yet, and I’m not willing to wager my life that the danger has passed, especially when evidence clearly shows quite the opposite.

As you can see, I was pretty skeptical about our American exceptionalism right from the start. Back in the early days when grocery stores couldn’t stock toilet paper, ginger, baking flour, or yeast, and when meat purchases were rationed.

That was in mid-May. Time passed, but the six-month anniversary of the outbreak prompted me to revisit the topic. So I wrote the following fragment in late August and early September:

In May I wrote — but never shared — a little blogpo about how things were going two months into the Covid-19 lockdown. Now here we are six months into a pandemic, and the situation has evolved slowly. Perhaps now it’s time to actually share my thoughts, before the whole episode blows over and is forgotten.

The initial phase went pretty well for the most part. Being fully locked down actually wasn’t a huge change from our normal winter lifestyle. Inna stopped her already-rare visits to her downtown office, restaurant food was declared off-limits, and our grocery trips became less frequent, meticulously planned, and considerably more expensive. I added burritos to my cooking repertoire.

Our social lives have been limited to a tiny number of masked porch visits with friends. The two local meditation groups I sometimes lead both went online, and my former Kalyana Mitta (spiritual friends) group from Boston — who are now spread all across the United States — reconstituted itself on Zoom.

Through the end of May, cycling was 98% indoors, but I got outside more over the summer, though only for short rides. With all my cycling events cancelled, I’ve mimicked most of them indoors, on Zwift. You can read all the details about how that’s gone on my cycling blog. And I even registered as a virtual rider on this year’s Pan-Mass Challenge!

Financially, we’ve been fine. Inna’s job remains secure. Savings and investments took an initial 10% hit, but have more than fully recovered. With interest rates pegged at zero, I’m very happy to have a chunk of cash earning 2-3% in CDs; but I’ll need to figure out what to do next spring when they mature.

By then my lack of faith in Americans was fully proven out, leaving no need to make further dire predictions. I was mostly occupied with Inna and my domestic situation, which had reached a sustained level of quote-normalcy-closequote.

Which brings us to March 2021, the anniversary of our Covid-19 lockdown. What is there to say now?

Winter was hard. No social contact with anyone. No outdoor cycling at all, not even occasional walks. Just a solid five months of staring at these same unchanging apartment walls.

As if the pandemic itself weren’t enough to deal with, 2020 also brought us the murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests and rioting, severe Australian bushfires, Prince Harry renounced membership in the British royal family, there was the sudden appearance of murder hornets, the horrific Beirut explosion, an economic war with China, Brexit finally happened, a major Russian cyberattack, oil prices crashed and actually went negative, the stock market pulled back, fanatical right-wing lockdown protestors stormed the Michigan state capitol, and the historic Aricebo radio telescope collapsed. Oh, and notable deaths included Kobe Bryant, Little Richard, Alex Trebek, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and John Lewis.

American “exceptionalism” was on full display. Over the winter holidays, infections soared and the body counts rose to 3,000… then 4,000… then 5,000 per day (and 880,000 per day globally). And still people disregarded pleas to wear face masks in public and called for businesses and schools to re-open.

The sitting President of the United States was impeached for asking the Ukraine to investigate his opponent, then got Covid himself, and had protestors at a church teargassed so he could pose for a photo op, blasphemously holding a Bible.

America’s Presidential election was pathetic and terrifying. We had the most divisive, violent election in 50 years, followed by open insurrection and the occupation of the US Capitol by domestic terrorists incited by an openly lying lame duck President in direct violation of his Constitutional oath. But despite all this, he was vociferously defended by his morally bankrupt political party. My country: the shitshow.

Following the overdue removal of our virus- and election-results denying “leader,” we are finally producing one conventional and two novel messenger RNA vaccines which are presumably extremely effective. We’re still in the early days of distribution, but people are getting inoculated, which is the thread of hope that we’ve all been clinging to since this ordeal began.

So after a long, hard, dreary, stressful winter, the impending return of spring comes with some long-awaited, tender shoots of hope.

Inna will be fully vaccinated this month. Unfortunately I'll have a much longer wait, because I don’t meet any special age, co-morbidity, or career role qualifications.

And the weather should start permitting properly-masked and -distanced social contact, as well as solo outdoor cycling... although don’t ask about my bike and the continuing complete unavailability of both new and replacement parts!

So there’s a little bit of hope that this spring we might be turning the corner. It’s still overshadowed by the knowledge that even fully vaccinated it’ll be another year before life gets back to anything “normal”.

It’s still hard to write about. For an entire year, our lives have been reduced to the most mundane, uneventful commonalities, which makes for a pretty boring read.

And it’s still just as hard to articulate the lingering, perpetual stress, discomfort, and unease of living with this pandemic. Getting a haircut or an eye exam and new glasses still seem like remote, almost inconceivable luxuries. And bike parts… well, as I said, don’t get me started about that.

And still, we endure. Be well!

Two years after I wrote a couple posts about money—The Ghost of Munny Past and The Ghost of Munny Present—an astonishing discovery has prompted me to finally complete the cycle.

But before I get to the meat, how have the past two years gone?

Pretty good. My investment gains are keeping pace with my spending, which is convenient. Most of my stocks have been winners (or at least not losers), although I’m surprised by the amount of turnover in my portfolio. And gold has been a surprisingly good call. Overall, I’m quite happy... at least at this precise moment in time.

But what I really want to share with you is a windfall that’s so big, I can only compare it to when I discovered how to cash out of my 401k / IRA without paying any income taxes. It’s the same level of jaw-dropping awesomeness.

And it comes in two parts.

It began when I needed to look up capital gains tax rates. Short-term gains from stocks held less than a year are taxed at the same rate as regular income, and I thought long-term gains were taxed at a single flat rate.

But I was wrong; long-term capital gains are taxed at three graduated rates based on your income, and at low income levels, the long-term capital gains tax rate is 0%!

That’s right: so long as your total income is less than $39,375, you pay no federal tax at all on long-term capital gains! Better still, your $12,200 standard deduction also factors into your income, which means that 0% tax rate still applies for people with incomes up to $51,575!

If, like me, you have unrealized profits from long-term investments, but negligible income because you’re between jobs, this means you can sell your stock and pocket the entire proceeds without paying any federal tax on it! If you sold stocks that had appreciated by $30,000, that would save you $4,500 at the basic 15% tax rate, or $6,000 at the higher-income 20% tax rate. That’s an absolute steal!

“But Orny,” you say, “I want to keep my investments. I don’t want to sell them, especially the ones that are making lots of money!”

Such a deal I have for you!

Here’s what you do: sell your appreciated stock, then just buy an equal number of shares to open a new position. That way, you recognize the profit now, while you can take advantage of that mindblowing 0% capital gains tax rate, but continue to stay invested. It’s called a “wash sale”.

The newly-purchased shares will have a new, higher cost basis, which reduces any capital gains tax due when you eventually close that position. Aside from trading fees, the only drawback is that you also reset the timer on how long you’ve owned that position, so the new shares become a short-term investment until you’ve held them for a full year.

“But wait a minute,” you say, “aren’t there tax laws that forbid selling and buying the same stock within 30 days?”

Yes, there are; but here’s the second bit of jaw-dropping awesomeness: the federal wash sale rule only applies to investments sold at a loss! Because you accrue tax benefits when you lose money on an investment, the IRS doesn’t want people monkeying around and taking artificial losses. But they only care when you're selling an investment at a loss; the wash sale rule doesn’t apply at all when selling an investment at a profit!

So go ahead: sell your winners, pay zero taxes on the capital gains, then turn around and repurchase the shares at a higher cost basis if you want. It’s all completely kosher!

Like my tax-free 401k trick, this windfall is only open to people with low incomes, but if you qualify, it’s a flabbergasting opportunity that you shouldn't ignore.

Honestly, these unexpected benefits of unemployment are a persuasive argument to never go back to work again!

My previous post, The Ghost of Munny Past, covered some of my pre-2015 experiences with money and investing. Here we get caught up to present-day with a few more recent adventures.

At the start of 2015, most of my net worth was tied up in my Back Bay condo, which had originally been purchased with proceeds from the Sapient stock I’d acquired as an early employee.

At the end of 2015, I moved to Pittsburgh, which meant putting the condo on the market: my first home sale. Fortunately, despite needing renovation, it sold promptly on Leap Day 2016, for a reasonable “profit”. I use the word “profit” advisedly, given the things I said about mortgages in my previous post. Still, investing the proceeds from my condo sale has been one of my biggest preoccupations for the past year.

Cash: I Has It! Now What?

After the closing, I suddenly found myself sitting on a buttload of real and actual cold, hard cash. Now, everyone “knows” that cash is presumably the worst place to keep your cash, but having been kept busy with the move and the home sale, I hadn’t developed a plan for what to do with the proceeds.

I hesitated to move it into anything riskier than cash, since the stock market in early 2016 wasn’t looking all that sanguine, and I wasn’t comfortable with bonds or other investment vehicles. I didn’t know what to do, but at least I knew I didn’t know what I didn’t know,

So I did what any red-blooded intellectual (who didn’t know what to do) would do: I devoted myself to studying what to do! For more than a year, I read books, studied the financial news, took online education, consulted brokers, and gradually developed a plan of action. All while enduring the increasing bemusement of my partner, who naturally saw a lot of preparation happening, but almost no action.

To further emphasize the point, my mother’s passing at the beginning of 2017 resulted in a small amount of insurance and pension proceeds being added to my languishing all-cash position. It really was time to start putting a year of immobile study into action.

Strategic Redeployment

The biggest theme in personal financial planning is asset allocation and diversification. While it was easy to come up with a theoretical target allocation of one third cash and bonds, one third stock, and one third mutual funds and ETFs, that proved a little more challenging to accomplish in real life.

I found myself faced with decisions regarding actively-managed funds versus passive index funds; whether I wanted to get into options trading; environmental, social, and governance considerations; market timing vs. dollar cost averaging; gold and commodities futures; and more. And I was especially dismayed by the prohibitive complexity involved in buying bonds, which are presumably among the safest investments around.

Ultimately I developed a watchlist and opportunistically market-timed my way into several positions. For all my equity investments—stocks, mutual funds, and ETFs—the idea is to buy them once and hold them long-term. Frequent trading incurs a lot of taxes and sales charges that dramatically erode your returns.

Leaving equities aside for now, I threw a chunk of my cash allocation into a 2-year certificate of deposit, bought a similar-duration US Treasury Note, and bought into the GLD gold ETF. Those are defensive options that will be readily available if I need to tap my cash reserves in the near future, while having the advantage of giving me protection from market downturns and some return on my cash.

Mutual funds and ETFs represent my core holdings, since they’re less risky than individual stocks. I’m still tweaking and building these positions, but the current plan is to spread the bulk of my savings out over a core S&P 500 ETF, domestic and international dividend funds, municipal bond funds, and a small cap ETF.

My smaller chunk of discretionary / aggressive investing money has been spread between a couple dozen individual stocks. Being more volatile than mutual funds and ETFs, stocks can give you significantly market-beating results, but with corresponding downside risk, of course.

Since people enjoy hearing specific stock picks, I’ll mention those holdings. For the most part, there are no big surprises here: Wells Fargo, Johnson & Johnson, Amazon, KeyBank, Google, Facebook, Embraer, Fedex, Home Depot, Thermo-Fisher, International Paper, Emerson Electric, US Bancorp.

Unlike my tepid stock purchases prior to 2015 (listed at the end of my previous post), my 2017 picks have done very well so far. I’ve held most of them for less than a year, but already have an overall average return of 22 percent, with the worst having appreciated by 12 percent. Fourteen winners and zero losers! Well, I can’t take a lot of credit for that; it helps that the overall market had a tremendous year in 2017. As during the internet boom, I have again benefited from fortuitous timing.

Still, both the performance of my picks as well as the resulting paper profits make me feel pretty good. I’ve got more work to do, but two years after my condo sale, my portfolio is finally starting to take shape, and earning me some significant returns. Hopefully that will hold true until my next big financial milestone arrives.

Future Returns?

Returning to what I said at the start of this series, money is one of my six necessities for happiness. So far I’m meeting my needs while enjoying and mostly succeeding at hands-on money management.

Of course, that’s easy to say when the whole market is trending upward, but no one knows what challenges the future holds. Having written about The Ghost of Munny Past and The Ghost of Munny Present, there’s not much I can say about The Ghost of Munny Yet to Come. I can only take prudent precautions and hope that when he shows up, he’ll be as nice to me as his predecessors have been!

But here in my fifties, I’m delighted to be able to sit back and say, “So far, so good…”

On leap day, we closed the sale of my apartment in the historic Hotel Vendome condo in Boston’s Copley Square.

Neither my original purchase nor the recent sale of the property were my favorite life experiences. Both entailed an awful lot of seemingly-unnecessary complexity, risk, and bother. Although I suppose the size of the transaction warrants such precautions.

When I bought the unit back in 2001, I was looking for a safe place to stash the proceeds from participating in Sapient’s IPO and meteoric rise to prominence and inclusion in the S&P 500. I paid a lot of capital gains tax and bought when real estate prices were high, but at least I liquidated my company stock options before the Internet Bubble burst in the early 2000s. Many of my coworkers held onto their shares—or worse still, used them as margin leverage—and lost all their unrealized fortunes when the market turned on them.

In the end, I’d like to say that owning a condo turned out to be a really good investment. After all, it proved to be a lot safer than Sapient stock, and the property appreciated by about 33 percent during the fifteen years I was there.

On the other hand, I paid a whole shitload of mortgage interest. While that (and property taxes) provided a nice income tax deduction, the government gives you the deduction because you are paying so much in interest (and property tax). So net-net, I’m not sure I got a better return than if I had invested the money somewhere else.

The good news is that I’m debt-free for the first time in 15 years, which is always an awesome feeling. Even though I’m over 50, being financially self-sufficient and independent remains one of the most central values that I inherited from my parents.

However, liquidating that big asset comes with the intimidating (but probably desirable) challenge of figuring out how to best invest the proceeds, which represent about 90 percent of my net worth. I’m thinking something fairly defensive, but we’ll just have to see how it turns out.

And after listening to me talk about the move for so long, you’ll probably be happy to know that this severs my final significant tie to Boston. You’ll still hear lots about my exploration of my new home in Pittsburgh, but the long-talked-about departure from Boston is finally complete.

I’ll certainly miss the Vendome. It was my first experience in home buying, ownership, and selling, It was an amazing location and a wonderful place to be for those 15 years, and I loved it dearly. More than any other house in a long, long time, it felt like home to me, and I’ll miss that a lot.

But it belongs to a chapter of my life that’s now finished. Now it’s time to look forward to whatever new story unfolds.

4:52am.

It's like having just come from an incredible movie that touched you to the heart, over and over.

And no one else has ever seen it.

No one else has ever even heard of it.

And they'll never get the chance to see it.

You'll never be able to share it with anyone.

"Made mindless" and the Southern Cross.

Berg and the Nakeds.

From Ka-Ve to my wedding to the Paint Lady.

Car magazines and reading primers

Frankenstein and Philadelphia Freedom.

Corrugated fun.

Dodgeball and Seally Pond.

The Saco River and the quarry.

Garnet and Garnett.

Watching the most important person in my life dying in an ICU.

The Bentmen and Concussion Ensemble.

From group love in a Jersey suburb to a different kind of group love in a cottage on a Scottish loch.

Free Enterprise.

Disco duck and "sprots".

Frodo Lives! at the McClurg Court Theater.

Sink the buses and save the nukes.

He's an eviscerator.

Sweet, Abba, and Devo piped thru a jury-rigged speaker system.

Mosquito Mountain and the Devil's Triangle.

Miles and miles of roads and trails that no one else has ever seen.

The Klong Yaw.

Hundred thousand dollar tax bills, and one-cent bank statements.

The Great Lie, and Then Again, Maybe I Won't.

Blond. Egad.

The turn toward Race Point, and resting at the beach afterward.

The campanile of the New Old South Church.

Astoria, and the RR.

Nights at Bill's or the Pluff.

The Toxicmobile. The Glick. The Starship. The Devinci and the Plastic Bullet.

Quack and meow. I'm flabbergasted. Ay-ant! Juggo naiyo.

Fletcher Pratt. "Eh? Did you say munny?" Yes, shut up, Hal.

Playing ball against the wall of the DMV for years at a time.

Compersion, and the ten thousand and one unspoken crushes.

Suits, casual, and back to suits. Purple rugs everywhere. I think the Morale Committee should have considered that.

Pemaquid, Camden, Battie. My tree in Old Town.

The ComDisk, MJJWSMBB, and HSnet.

Mazar Balinu, Carmarade, and DAL-SYS.

Kenny Kinnikinnick, inventor of Gnip Gnop.

Silent summer drives back from girlfriends' homes.

And the Southern Cross.

This is what it's like to grow old.

I've lived my life thinking: while I'm young, I'll live it up. That way I'll have a huge collection of wonderful memories to relive when I get old, and can't do all those fun things anymore.

I guess I'm over the crest of that proverbial hill, because when I look back, I'm filled with hundreds upon hundreds of memories of my life.

I see now why old people feel isolated. It's not because they're alone; it's because they've lived an amazing, deeply touching novel that no one else will ever read.

So many people and places and events have touched my life, but no person will ever share the things I remember, the things that even today bring up deep feelings that toss me around like a toy boat toy boat toy boat.

If you've been part of my life, I owe you something I can never repay. You've honored me greatly, and no matter how small a part you played or how distant the events in question, rest assured that you have touched me, and I remember.

Though no one else can or will, I shall remember, until the end of my days. Namaste, my friend.

Think about how many times I have fallen.
Spirits are using me, larger voices callin'.
What Heaven brought you and me cannot be forgotten.

I know it’s tedious to read about everyone’s end-of-year natterings, so I’ll keep mine brief.

Having just gone through a very difficult period, I’m naturally inclined to write 2005 off as just a series of very painful events. However, when I went to make a list of the good and the bad, I discovered a very surprising and substantial imbalance toward the good. This year in particular this list seems to really help keep things in perspective.

So here’s my lists:

The Bad		The Good
Puggle’s sudden death Inna’s hospitalization Abandoning my graphic design certificate program The damage done to my ceilings by leaks in the building’s A/C system Having to send back my new Dell laptop as defective The brouhaha with my bike shop over replacing my headset Early-season difficulties on the bike due to my back and seat I never had the time to get started in sea kayaking this year		Got a new job and began making money again DargonZine went back into circulation, printing the first half of the long-awaited Black Idol story arc, our most ambitious collaboration ever Those included “Liberated Hope”, a two-chapter story of my own Made a ton of positive progress in incorporating Buddhist philosophy into my life Bought a very nice brand new road bike Realized a longstanding dream by taking the train up to Portland, Maine and biking from there to Augusta Had three pieces of artwork displayed publicly at my art school’s senior show Met several prominent personalities, including Benoit Mandelbrot, Greg Hawkes, Ajahn Brahm, and Terry Pratchett Had a tremendously enjoyable and successful Pan-Mass Challenge charity ride Attended a pleasant Dargon Writers’ Summit in Traverse City, Michigan Learned how to do my own artistic bookbinding Went for a schooner ride in Camden, Maine with my brother Began attending friendly scotch nights and picked up a rare bottle of Port Ellen at a local tasting Got back into the swing of playing Diplomacy and learned how to play the excellent game Settlers of Catan Got back into and put in a good showing at some friendly poker games, then had a very profitable blackjack outing at Foxwoods Got the bloaty-ohs attending my first Scooper Bowl: an all-you-can-eat ice cream charity event Bought an iPod Nano Joined the ACLU in response to the US government’s unabashed assault on human rights both domestically and abroad Had a fun time showing my friend Tasia around Boston

So that’s the scoop. As you can see, the positives far outweigh the negatives, even if there were a couple really, really terrible things that happened this year.

It was a year ago today that I bought my condo. It really doesn't seem like it's been that long, although I suppose part of that could be the fact that I didn't actually move into the new place until six weeks later.

One of the big changes that resulted is that I now have a big ol' hunk of debt, for the first time in about eight years. Certainly, my net worth is still very much positive (since the condo is very definitely an asset), but I'm committed to coming up with a mortgage payment every month, most of which is money flushed down the shitter. Consider that to date I've paid off about $1600 worth of principal on my mortgage, and closer to $12000 in interest. And over the life of my loan, I will have given my mortgageholder two and a half times the amount that I borrowed. And I was lucky in that I got a good interest rate and didn't have to pay mortgage insurance, which would have been even more money down the tubes! Anyone who tells you that having a mortgage is a good way to force yourself to save is talking out of their ass, because you're paying someone more than twice whatever you save, just for the priviledge of forcing you to save.

Of course, I can't complain. My house was my justification for selling my Sapient stock when I did, and it's already proven a much, much wiser place to keep my money. Not to mention, I'm really thoroughly pleased with the place. It is a substantial improvement over my old place, and I could see myself staying here for several, perhaps many years.

It also appears to have been the vanguard of another major transition in my life. Every so often I go through a sea-change, where everything in my life is thrown up in the air and comes down differently, but almost always for the better. One example was graduating high school, my relationship with Ailsa, and starting college. Another was when Linda and I got married, I graduated from college, moved to Shrewsbury, gave up DargonZine, and got a job at MediQual. Another was when Linda and I separated, I moved into Natick, regained control of DargonZine, grew my hair out, started nightclubbing in Boston, Ailsa moved in, I finally got my teeth fixed, and I got involved with the polyamorous and BDSM communities. The most recent was back in 1995, when Puggle and I moved into my Boston apartment in the West Fens, I sold my car and my television, started working for Sapient, and became a fixture in the nightclub and BDSM scenes.

But that was seven years ago now, and another wholesale change is well under way. I was fortunate enough to make a comfortable amount on Sapient stock, and wisely exchanged that for a down payment on my new condo in a fabulous location in Boston's Back Bay. I made the transition from a hardcore programmer/analyst to a World-Wide Web and user interface designer, and entered a formal program at the New England School of Art and Design in order to bolster my creative, artistic, and design skills. I was laid off from my job at Sapient, forcing me into my next career move. I cut my hair short. And, in the only substantial disappointment of recent times, Inna ended our three and a half year relationship.

The funny thing is that the times when I've been happiest in my life have always been right after I've gone through those periods of dramatic change, because I've found a place that is more suited to the person I've become since the last change. I find that odd because I am, by nature, a creature of routine and habit; though I probably stay in my well-worn paths longer than necessary, and welcome the opportunity for change when it comes.

And as I said above, as well as in a private journal entry entitled "¡Que Linda!", I certainly appear to be on the cusp of another such sea-change. Whether I'll wind up being in a better place than I've been in for the past seven years, I don't know, and I have no guarantee. But between my savings, my Sapient severance, and unemployment insurance, I have the luxury of both enjoying the coming summer, free from the stresses of work and relationship, but also of taking the time to visualize and then craft the life that I want to lead in the years to come.

As I see it, there are three main elements of life that are of primary importance in my happiness, and which need to be optimized during times of wholesale change: career, housing, and social life/relationships. But even though career and social life and relationships are still TBD, I'm extremely happy with the job I've already done in terms of securing my "next generation" housing arrangements, and that's ample cause to celebrate. Happy House Closing Day!

So today I was laid off, along with 550 other people, in Sapient's third round of layoffs. Actually, I've been given the option of continuing to work for them for another month, so although I was laid off, I won't really be unemployed until the end of March.

I have a hard time really assimilating this information. I haven't been let go from a job in 15 years, and after seven years at Sapient, it's kind of hard to imagine not having the security and confidence and comfort that went with it. I guess I'm still somewhat in shock, although the layoffs weren't a surprise, and I'd been ready for it for some time. It's just going to be a radical change, and I'm really not so good at big changes... especially when it cuts to the core of my self-worth, as this does. Not, mind you, that I think my being laid off had to do with performance, but instead my being at Sapient really bolstered my self-image.

Practically, I should be fine. Although I've got a mortgage and the job market sucks right now, my severance will keep me going into August without having to tap my savings. Furthermore, I have a good deal of savings around, and none of that even includes unemployment insurance, either. So in that sense I'll be fine.

My biggest concern is when I re-enter the job market, how I'll sell myself. The problem there is that I've moved out of the technical realm, but haven't got enough experience to land a job on the creative side. So it's going to be a bit of a selling and positioning job when I finally do get a resume together. And, for the first time, a portfolio, as well!

Looking back at Sapient, it certainly was a great job. It taught me a lot, and was very financially rewarding, and I got to work with a huge number of really great people. And, of course, it helped me make the transition from systems and database programmer to site designer. The big downside was really the workload, but even that wasn't so bad much of the time.

But now it's all history, and I need to look forward. From here, I really don't know what the future will hold for me. About all I can say is that I will take some time and enjoy life through the summer. The job market is really bad, and I'll need to find something that I can do which will be in demand, but I can wait a little while for that. I'm just hoping that I can find something that keeps me on the edge of technology and creative, because that's really what I enjoy most. And hopefully my next step will give me as much security and growth as I experienced at Sapient.

But now it's time for a little break, and then a big change.