Hopes and doubts during a pandemic.

(The following blog entry was originally posted on Blogger on 08/06/20)

Here I am with my first blog entry of 2020, in August. Sorry I'm late. Got sidetracked by everything but work. LOL. Well, not really LOL, more like COL.

I'll say this: if the rest of the year is anything like the year so far, the desperation caused by COVID-19 will probably be just as ugly. I've endured some bad years as a creative professional, but this one tops them all, hands down, without question. A total shitshow of epic proportions.

It's a shame really, because in the 4th quarter of 2019, I thought I'd made big strides toward developing new clients and getting a decent amount of repeat business from existing ones. With Thanksgiving, Christmas and the New Year ahead, I was feeling optimistic about 2020.

Then the news media began to focus more attention on the flu outbreak that began in Wuhan, China. But in all honesty, I didn't think it was something to be too concerned about at the time.

Like millions of people in the US and abroad, the virus proved us so wrong.

Christmas and New Year's came and went, and in January 2020, some of my freelance assignments carried over into January. By the end of January, no new projects were coming my way. I chalked it up to companies getting their budget ducks in a row and planning out the year. Meanwhile, the pandemic was becoming the only news item all day long, and my clients began to pump the brakes on their marketing.

By February, fear had taken hold my clients and their marketing efforts, and from that point on it was a slippery slope into a budget freezes.

Then March rolled in and a lockdown situation was happening everywhere in the US. I'm in Florida, and you all know the story in this state. We all began to adapt to this "new reality." The new reality for me, which continues at the time of this writing, is that no freelance projects have come in, and it has become painfully obvious that any new business development efforts on my part would be wasted time.

The fallout from diminished marketing budgets rippled through ad agencies and design departments all over the country. Layoffs and high unemployment created a surge of fresh new freelance talent for design and writing. This in turn is driving creative fees down, and my skill sets have become a commodity.

For example, take a freelance site like Upwork. You'll see hundreds of projects posted by potential clients with tasty budgets of $100 or $150, for things like a logo or a branding style guide. These items normally fetch thousands of dollars — even for a solo practitioner. It's a well established site, but you'll pay Upwork commissions for jobs you finish, as well as fees required to place bids on jobs. So that $100 job becomes $80 when all's said and done. Oof.

You'll see similar low-dollar budgets with low-end projects at Fiverr or Freelancer (I've deliberately not posted URLs to the aforementioned job sites because they're not paying me to promote them). I have profiles on all three sites, and I scroll through them almost every day looking for projects that pay well — basically until my eyes bleed.

In short, competition is fierce on these project sites. If you don't bid on a new project posting within the first hour or two, you'll be lost in a pool of 10 to 50 bids. The key is to keep tossing bids out. It's a numbers game like anything else, and you just have keep playing the job lottery until something hits.

Having said that, I'm part of the ever-growing category of the under-employed in America. And, it begs the question: what do I do next? Or rather, what should I do next? Do I retrain myself and change careers? If so, given that we're in the midst of a depression, what do I pivot to? (Let's be real: I'm not going to be the next YouTube star or social media influencer. I have a healthy amount of contempt for that form of marketing.)

I read somewhere that human beings have about 10,000 thoughts a day and 90% of them are the same ones we had yesterday. I guess that's the root cause of my doubts. I'm living in a real-world Groundhog Day movie virtually every day. I don't have an inspired answer for what my next career move is right now. I guess opportunity will present itself. All I know is not much is going to be actionable until the coronavirus has been disarmed.

The good news is I haven't spiraled into any form of addiction or depression. I think what keeps my hope alive is the knowledge that the virus won't stick around forever. A vaccine will be developed. The $10,000 question is: when.

Well, that's all I have to share this time around. In a few months maybe we'll ring in the New Year with a new President ahead of us, and the pandemic behind us.

In the meantime, be safe and stay healthy.

Yay! We left Manhattan for Florida! Wait, what?

(The following blog entry was originally posted on Blogger on 02/28/19)

We did it. We got ourselves moved. My wife and I are officially Floridians.

Thirty-one years of urban life in New York City now in the rear view mirror.

We landed safely at Tampa International Airport on July 31, 2018 at 11pm, with two big suitcases and two Pomeranians in tow. We got our mess of dogs and luggage to the curb and my brother pulled up to load us all in. Holy shit. It's real. We're no longer New Yorkers. We're hot and sweaty Floridians.

The July heat and humidity outside the airport hit us like a big invisible, moist wave.

We arrived at our new home around midnight. A bottle of prosecco and a bottle of bourbon on a small table confirmed our arrival, thanks to my loving family. A big paper WELCOME HOME sign and balloons was strung over the living room windows, adoringly made by my sister-in-law and nieces. My mom had set a table for two. It was all very sweet and it made us feel truly welcome.

It would take us a couple months to mentally accept the reality of it — that we don't have an Upper West Side Manhattan lifestyle anymore. We will need to become car people. And attend monthly HOA meetings. And go to a grocery store to buy food! (Fresh Direct had become my most valued assistant in NYC). We no longer walk our dogs in Central Park twice a day. A mild case of PTSD was presenting itself.

There would home furnishings to buy (we'd sold all our furniture in NYC by the time we left). Then there's a car to buy. The last time I owned a car was 1989, and my wife had a 'bitchin Dihatsu' for a while when she lived in Santa Fe a long time ago. Aside from that, we'd both been city dwellers without a need for a car.

Once we got ourselves situated, I rented a car for a week and we began looking around for something to buy. We lucked into a 2013 Ford C-Max Hybrid SE that was for sale right across the road from our condo complex. We both said WTF is a Ford C-Max? but learned it was quite the nice little car that Ford made to compete with the Prius. Anyway, it was in great condition, we made a lowball offer to the car dealer, which he accepted, then got the ball rolling. Car insurance. Transfer of driver's licenses. Locating the local gas stations, tire stores, oil change businesses, yada yada yada.

Then we started into the rehab and repair work of my condo unit. We redid the floors with tile planks and new carpeting, and replaced old baseboard with new while moving around boxes of our stuff a dozen times. Lots of stress and fatigue from it all, but worth it.

On many levels life got easier after escaping from New York. As you could imagine, our cost of living went down dramatically in the first month. Just for comparison — our monthly rent in Manhattan was equal to our total cost of living in our new condo. Let that sink in.

So after money months of turning an empty condo into a home, we planned a return trip to NYC in November, but on the day of our schedule flight, one of our dogs, Parker, was presenting some odd behavior so I took him to the vet for an exam. Results show he'd somehow managed to compress vertabrae in his neck and spine. He probably chased a toy and smacked into a wall or door. Trip cancelled. His rehab would take a 6 weeks.

Then in January 2019, the other Pomeranian, Penny, was limping noticeably. One day on a walk she went to chase Parker and then just yelped and sat down. I knew right away something was bad. Off to the vet we go. X-rays and an exam showed she'd completely torn the ACL in her right knee. We got her into surgery that afternoon and a 12-week rehab program ensued. Good times.

February was marked by my mom having a worrisome episode in her chest area that turned out to be a false positive for a heart blockage. Scrambling to care for pets and people made for a "fun" couple days. We all celebrated my birthday with family at one of our favorite restaurants on Clearwater Beach called Palm Pavillion. Great food, great atmosphere, comfortable temperatures, and quality time with my wife, brother, sister-in-law, and my mom.

And now here it is almost March, 2019. We're still doing home upgrades. Penny is getting better little by little. Our belongings have been completely unboxed and stowed in a proper place. We turned the extra small bedroom into my home office and all my graphic design tech. And so it goes ... we adapt and fiddle and try to make life livable.

I'm finding some freelance work and looking for more. I've also applied to probably 20 open positions for Creative Directors, but I'm not holding my breath that I'll get a call back.

For the past 6 months I've been involved in a local business networking group called TechRoots in the St. Petersburg area. I've gotten a chance to meet some really motivated, self-employed people who are doing interesting things. We meet bi-weekly, and usually at some cool spot in St. Pete. The downtown area is really growing rapidly, and seems like it's becoming the home to more tech startups and small businesses. I also re-joined AIGA's Tampa Bay chapter and I hope to get more involved with their activities on the Tampa side of the area.

I've reconnected with some graphic design school colleagues who still live in the area and we plan to have a mini reunion this weekend over dinner. This will be so much fun. One of the guys I haven't seen in over 30 years!

As soon as the Gulf of Mexico warms up this summer we'll start to get our dogs out to the nearby pet beach at Honeymoon Island Park on a more frequent basis. It's a great place to decompress and enjoy the sunset — not to mention let the dogs romp around and get their energy spent.

So, we're finding ways to keep life interesting and fulfilling here. It's not the city by any stretch, but we have a little garden area and a patio for sitting outside on cool evenings. I can even have a cigar and a cocktail without having to go somewhere to do it.

And I can debate with myself, or my wife, or friends, whether or not this lifestyle beats our Manhattan adult playground. It probably does, but we both miss The City terribly. It's a loud, crazy, expensive place and yet I “made it” there. I guess I can make it here, or anywhere.

End of an era in NYC.

(The following blog entry was originally posted on Blogger on 06/04/18)

If you read my last posting, you have an idea of what went down in 2017. The avalanche of unfortunate professional events that triggered our move-in with my mother-in-law seemed like a bad joke, and my wife and I were the punchline.

As of this writing, we've been holed up in my MIL's Upper West Side apartment for 6 months, trying to be caregivers, to stabilize her dilapidated old apartment, and be good stewards of her life. It hasn't worked out well. It ended up costing us all so much more than we'd planned, both financially and emotionally.

We finally decided in May to retain a Medicare/Medicaid consultancy to fast-track her into Medicaid, and get her set up with home health aides and in-home care. Nothing in the process was easy, but, she will begin receiving the benefits within the next two weeks. So at least we accomplished something.

Having said that, on June 23 we'll be leaving my MIL's place — to return to our lovely, previous apartment (the very expensive one I mentioned in my last blog posting) for the last month of our lease. We'll then begin preparations to leave NYC.

9 months and about 150 job applications later, it has become clear: very few companies hire new employees over age 50, especially creative directors like me. Experiencing this first-hand has been painful. I'd assume New York City is no different than anywhere else in the U.S. And because of that bias, we have no choice but to pack up and leave.

Despite seeing many more open CD positions here than in other markets, NYC wants younger instead of older. Age bias continues to be rampant in the corporate world. Everyone knows it, every company is guilty of it, and yet it continues. Older workers are stupid, and young people know everything. Right. Good luck with Google and Facebook and programmatic ad buying. When that fails, lay off everyone and hire newer, younger people. Rinse and repeat.

What a bummer. I've been here 31 years. My whole professional career has been spent in NYC and the tri-state area. My wife grew up here, and in fact, grew up in my MIL's apartment (the one mentioned above). She left the city to go to college out in New Mexico and Washington, then eventually came back via a job offer in the early 2000s. We both have survived here, and some years, have prospered. She was diagnosed with Lyme disease in 2005, and has suffered tremendously in the years since then. She has been on disability since 2005. And with my layoff in October 2017, it only made life more difficult. All things considered, we now feel it's time to go, and go somewhere affordable. Fortunately for us, we do have somewhere else to go.

I bought a condo in Palm Harbor, Florida in 2012. Ostensibly it was an investment designed to benefit my mom. She found the condo while apartment hunting one day, and I bought it as a short sale. It was a steal, and it timed the bottom of the real estate crisis. My mother had been living in it since then, and for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is our "crisis" here, she decided to move out this month.

So, now our sights are set on the Tampa/St. Petersburg area. We have a lot to do before the last box is packed and shipped, but it looks like we'll be relocated by the end of July.

My brother and his family also live in that area, so it'll be nice to spend more time with them. Go to the beach. Play cards. Maybe even go to the Keys and snorkel or scuba dive. Get in better shape. Enjoy sunsets. We're really hoping this will effect some positive changes in our lives. I'm not a big fan of Florida, but maybe it'll open some doors. We'll see.

Wish us luck.