So, another Melbourne Cup has rolled around, this year, didn’t bet, didn’t watch the race and didn’t even consider the race as an option other than ‘oh yeah the cup is on today’. Literally can’t afford to waste the money on the bet, and really had other things on my mind today, like my son who had a fall at school and needed to be brought home and looked after.

Where do I start?

I have now been working casually a few days a week locally on the coast since about May this year. Having to put my mortgage onto interest only was a pain, but had to be done. Got ALL my taxes sorted, and had a payment plan in place to pay back the debt. Fortunately as I dropped out of employment prior to the end of the year, I did end up with a big tax return that covered almost the entire amount of back taxes. I ended up paying out the rest as it was only a few hundred dollars. A BIG load off my mind doing that. There are still other debts, but nothing that can’t be managed now that I have one less debt to sort out. Working casually means I don’t get sick leave, holiday pay or anything like that, so even when I don’t feel great I have to suck it up and go to work. I have been picking up a little freelancing here and there, and I am just starting up my writing again, this time for a music website. I haven’t felt that I have done anything remarkable in the last few months, other than get some work and get the bills paid. I know it is at least going in the right direction, but sometimes it does feel like it is all too hard and I should just sell up and go live in the bush somewhere away from all the bullshit.

Going forward

There is no point in crying into my beer and saying ‘the universe is out to get me’ or some other self indulgent depressive saying. I am now looking after both my kids full-time, meaning I am getting a tax break as a single parent and a single parent pension to help go toward the kids living expenses. So I have not only way more time with my kids, I am getting a bit of extra income from the government in addition to my working income. It all helps, especially when there are always those lovely letters with the windows coming in the post just when you think you have caught up with them all… I will be working up some new products for my Etsy store, my Zazzle store, and hopefully getting a few other things done, like an online course, or just selling myself on my younow channel to make some coin (hell, if I can get paid by people watching me sleep I am all for it). 😉

Cool stuff on the cards

So, with all this drive to work and get more income, having the kids full-time, and a little bit of writing, what is my upcoming plans? Well, I have been wanting to get my shit together and get some music done, and I feel if I don’t bite the bullet and just do it, it will be another year and I won’t have gotten any further. So, being accountable to myself and pushing to get at least one or two songs done before the end of the year is my goal. And I don’t mean just write the lyrics, or get the music done, I mean finished, at least to a standard I would play it for friends, with the bonus goal of getting a video clip done for it as well. Most of my friends who are musically inclined tend to play in metal bands, so I guess it will end up as a couple of metal songs. I have some lyrics that we jammed out into a song a long time ago, and although the tape of that session is almost unusable (due to the volume being so loud we pretty much killed the microphone so it kept being unable to record, so the song has huge empty spots on the tape). I guess it all started earlier this year getting some VERY old videos that I was in or helped with converted from VHS cassette to digital. Seeing myself doing stuff I have no memory doing was a bit weird, but it was good to give my kids a laugh when they saw them for the first time. If I don’t get the songs completed, at least I will have collected together all my old lyrics, poems and writing so I could combine them into a book that I can self publish on amazon. Because that way I can at least try and get a little extra cash coming in from publishing.