My Horrible Month

This is my life in recent months.

On April 30, I was laid off from my position as a contract developer at Microsoft. As you might expect, it was a good job, an exciting job, and one where I greatly enjoyed my work and the people working with me.

I decided to make a full-time go at this internet marketing thing. I've been looking at various work-from-home systems since 1986. I've been looking for a way to make serious money on the internet since about 1998. Throughout all of that, I was either working a day job or running my own business.

During the month of May, I accomplished exactly nothing. I was stuck in analysis paralysis with what I already knew, and buying things left and right in the vain hope that something would break through the wall and get me to actually do something that worked. I decided not to buy anything more, unless I could finance it from the proceeds of my new business. I came to the Warrior Forum during this time.

In June, specifically on June 22, I made my first affiliate sale through ClickBank for a grand total of $17.98 in my account. This is also the day that my landlord's property management company filed eviction papers with the court. We wouldn't receive them for a few days yet, because the management company has no actual respect for the law.

On June 26, I got my eviction notice ($1,502 owed), and took my first freelance article writing job here on the WF. Things went well, I had a good feeling about it, and I pursued it. I spent a little money here and there as it came in... joined the War Room, signed up for Jenn Dize's ghostwriting course, that sort of thing... and took the jobs as they came in.

By July 2, I had brought in $1,850 through freelance writing. We paid the required rent, and breathed a heavy sigh of relief that we had beaten the July 7th deadline.

On July 8, we noticed that the rent we had paid was mysteriously back in our account. The rental company had refused the payment on the afternoon of the 7th - hours before we were required to respond to the legal filing. It would have been impossible to respond, even if we'd known about it the second it happened.

On July 10, a notice was posted on the side of our house that we were required to vacate the premises by the 15th. We spoke to the rental company, but they were completely unwilling to discuss the matter. We packed furiously that weekend, reserved a storage unit and a truck, and attempted to obtain temporary housing. The children were packed off to grandma's house, the cats boarded, and all we had left to do was find ourselves somewhere to sleep.

On the 13th, we discovered that sometime after business hours on July 10, someone had obtained our bank account information and made a fraudulent charge of close to $700. We cancelled the card, secured the account, and began the (reasonably simple and well-handled) process of obtaining the money back.

That night, we headed to the storage locker we rented - a load of stuff in the back of our truck - to find that it had been locked by the owners. It was after hours. We couldn't contact anyone. We called my parents, and arranged to leave all of our belongings in their back yard - outdoors, exposed to the elements - until we could resolve the problem. It wasn't supposed to rain for the next couple days, but this IS Washington state.

On the 14th, our internet service was terminated. Some of the $700 taken from our account was already reserved as a payment to the cable company, and when they couldn't process the payment... we lost our internet access. With no ability to deliver the writing work I had already accepted, I was unable to service my clients as well as I'd hoped.

Apologies have been made, but the damage is done. Every client relationship survives on trust. That trust has been broken. It will take time and effort to repair. It may never be repaired at all.

On the 15th, our Mazda blew a head gasket. It's our second car, so it's not a particularly huge problem, and our roadside assistance got it to a safe location... but we simply cannot afford to put it back in working order right now.

On the 16th, while bringing a load of stuff to the storage unit at about 1:00 in the afternoon, we were told that the truck needed to be returned by 2:30, because someone else had reserved it and it was the only truck they had in that size. We needed to unload an entire 17' truck in an hour and a half, during the hottest part of the day, with temperatures in the high nineties.

We managed to reserve another truck at another location for the next two days, and unloaded the last of our belongings into the storage unit on the morning of the 19th at just 7:30.

Whereupon we returned the truck, and went out to see the new Harry Potter movie.

It was pretty good.

And here I am today - on a hideously spotty wireless connection from a hotel room, which is the most we can afford right now, trying to figure out WTF we are going to do for a place to live. I miss my children. I miss my cats. Almost everything we own is in a storage locker. We have pretty much the clothes on our backs and our computers. That's it.

Many of you are in less than ideal situations, as well. I hope none of you are sitting in quite as bad a situation as we are. If you are, I hope you make your way out of it quickly and without too much hardship.

But what I really came here to say is this: if I can get out of bed and face the day with a smile, looking forward to a bright future with unshakable confidence, assured of my inevitable success - so can you.

There is no adversity you cannot overcome. No obstacle you cannot surmount. No goal you cannot achieve.

All you have to do is get up one more time than you get knocked down.