Well I've had more than a week of 2014, so it looks like I can handle this.

I figured out why the thought of a new year was making me nervous.

WE DON'T HAVE A PLAN.

Jethro and I are well into our 40s now.  We have a kid in college and one in his last year of high school.


.... and we live with my parents.  We're both self-employed and have no savings.  He's staying in the city during the week so he can work at his extremely demanding job from which he barely makes enough to stay in business.  I'm running a business that's doing a little better than break-even (and I mean, YAY right???) We don't have enough to pay rent somewhere else. (Especially since "somewhere else" would ideally accommodate either two large hooved mammals or a recording studio.)

We're sick of being apart.  We like each other.  This sucks.  It's been four years of this arrangement. It was supposed to be temporary.

Also, despite the fact that my folks are awesome, and there are many advantages in being part of a three generation household, it's not the way we want it.  We miss having our own home.   My mom shouldn't have to think about keeping track of all of us at her age.  I shouldn't have to worry about my mother worrying about where I am at my age.


Without getting into all the sorry details (which would just lead to this becoming another "draft" ready to be deleted) we've been over this LACK OF PLAN problem over and over.  We haven't come up with anything.  We've burned through Plan B, C, D and I think we might be down to Plan Q but who's keeping track anymore, y'know?

We had a plan.

Sell the cute bungalow in the subdivision, move out to the sticks, get the horse business going, sell the studio, use the combined proceeds to buy a farm and put both the businesses together.  Waaaaaay trickier than it sounds, but theoretically could have worked.

Except that we make plans without knowing what God has planned, and God is rather reticent with the information most of the time.

Who in their right freaking mind is going to buy a big recording studio????? Seriously, when is the last time YOU dropped $17 on an album?  It still costs money to record, but who's buying the product, let alone the facility it's made in?  Oh and also, global recession economic meltdown blah blah blah.


Just to clarify, and Jethro would be mortified if he read this, we're not dicking around here.  This is a very nice studio and he's one of the top engineers in Canada.  This is the state of the industry.

We dropped the price until it made no sense.  We could lower it so far that we'd get nothing out of it except our freedom.  We could just walk away, flat broke, penniless, zero assets, and debt free.  But we have spent our entire adult lives working on this, and dammit, we love our studio, and it doesn't feel right to leave it.  Having said that, doesn't feel good to keep going like this either.

I haven't wanted to share this.  I don't want sympathy, because we have made choices that got us here and I can accept that.  I'm not begging for magical answers.  I'm just admitting that we're middle aged, not content with where we're at, scared for the future, and can't come up with A Better Plan.

I'm sharing it on the internet because I have a nagging feeling we're not the only ones who've found themselves in this nasty stuck spot.

But maybe he and I are the lucky ones.  We both love the work we're doing, even if it's not making us enough to live like adults, we've managed to be easy enough to live with that the parents haven't kicked us out, our kids like us, and hey, we're still married!!!

So, 2014.  Aren't you a mystery.  I don't know what I'm going to do with you.

I think I'm going to have to Come Up With A Plan.


It might take me all year.  Gahhhhhhhhhhhhhh...