2024: Helene and Milton

We started the new year off with a return trip from our December stay in Pennsylvania and NYC, driving back to west central Florida in two days. It’s a pretty aggressive haul, but being on the road was good for our minds. We enjoyed seeing the changes in landscape through the eastern states — even if it was only a whatever-you-could-see-from-I-95 tableau passing by.

Freelance work resumed its usual pace, with monthly deliverables to my steady client while my wife and I continued our respective health battles. For her, insomnia and GI dysfunctions. For me, experimenting with new biologics to treat arthritis, which I’d been dealing with since my late 30s, had become a big challenge. Lots of trial-and-error, with pretty terrible flares that could only be calmed by Prednisone. Then finally we got things back to normal by February and March.

Leading up to this year, my wife had begun development of a jewelry business. She’d discovered electroplating and found the whole process fascinating enough to try it on small sand dollars, we began production in small batches, producing a line of pendants and necklaces. It was a lot of fun for her, and I developed a branding kit for her and launched it online on Shopify. We test-marketed it in a few local crafts shows as well, and the response was pretty encouraging. More on that in the 2025 summary blog to come.

In April, my wife took a trip to NYC to visit her mother, who had been slowly deteriorating into dementia for a couple years. She spent 2 weeks there visiting her mom in the hospital every day. It wasn’t anything particularly new, but this time the trip took a toll on her that I hadn’t seen before. She was deeply saddened by her mother’s slide in to senility. In the following days, she developed some worrisome cardiac symptoms that turned out to be “broken heart syndrome" and she underwent a couple months of medications, monitoring, and routine doctor follow-ups. Thankfully, she came out the other side with a full recovery.

Flash forward to summer, and we’re caught up in the pressing challenges of our lives, thinking about retirement plans, where we’d live next, etc. I’d decided to retire in March of 2025, which at that time was about 6 months away. Then in mid-September, a hurricane had spun up in the western Gulf of Mexico, and it tracked into the center of the Gulf. It became Hurricane Helene. It didn’t approach the west coast of Florida, thankfully, but it sent a storm surge into the cove that my condominium complex was built near. That cove is fed by a channel that snakes into the coastal areas of central Florida near Tarpon Springs. The high tide surge brought floodwaters onto the property, invading all 39 of the ground-floor units with about a foot of saltwater and waste water from sewers. We’d made the decision to evacuate to a hotel in Wesley Chapel, FL several days before the flood event, and after the water receded, we returned to an absolutely disgusting, sodden mess of a condo unit. We basically lost everything that was touching the floor.

Then two weeks later, Milton spun up in almost the exact same location, and this time, it came ashore to the St. Petersburg/Clearwater area. We abandoned our demolition and junk-hauling efforts, and again evacuated to a hotel — this time in Gainesville, FL. Milton wasn’t as disastrous to our condo complex, and in fact the heavy rains helped wash down some of the brown water residue of dead fish and other nasty things. We continued the process of documenting, tossing, and storing our belongings while my wife and I temporarily operated out of my mother’s house. Within a couple weeks we’d found an apartment rental that worked for us, and we began the long slog through the rest of the year, processing our PTSD, waiting for FEMA, the HOA’s insurance, my flood insurance, and eventually contractors, to assist and start the demolition and renovation process.

In October, I took on a second retainer client for creative work (a referral from my one steady client) and it was a welcome distraction from all the battles I’d taken on with FEMA claims, and the daily headaches that being displaced from one’s home can create.

By the end of the year, nothing had moved forward at all, and we braced for yet another unpredictable four years with Donald Trump as our president. We certainly were thankful none of us got physically hurt by the hurricane damage. As everyone always says: material things can be replaced. And our two dogs had adapted well to all the moving and upheaval.

Without question, this was our most difficult year, but we knew eventually we’d have an opportunity to rebuild.

2023 quick summary.

Ok, so I’ve got a lot to catch up on here since my last post in December 2022. Here we go.

I kept my head above water business-wise in 2023 with one steady client who had me on a monthly retainer for their social media posts, email marketing, as well as direct mail campaigns for their customers. I wove in a half-dozen other projects that added some extra billing and it made for a decent year of freelance work.

On the personal side, my wife had one of her worst years. She struggled to find doctors who could help overcome two major health obstacles: chronic insomnia and a dysfunctional GI tract. She also underwent gall bladder surgery, and the recovery was painful and difficult for her. Eventually, she healed up and we turned our focus back to seeking out a diagnostician for her GI issues. We kept striking out, but kept up the search nonetheless.

In October, we experienced rather ugly disruption. One of my wife’s doctors had asked her to stop a medication and start a new/similar one, and it didn’t go well. This happened about a week after the Oct. 7th Hamas attack on Israel. She had a terrible reaction to the sudden medication change, and it landed us in the ER. A few hours into the exam, her personality turned into someone I didn’t recognize, and they transported her to a behavioral health wing at a nearby hospital. It was really hard to watch. Several days later though, she stabilized and I the person I knew reappeared. She eventually returned to her normal, lovely and intelligent self, and we began to put back together the pieces of a shattered month.

November was filled with the inexorable GI doctor searches, and we struck gold with an amazing practice in Largo. One of the rock star doctors there had a hunch, and had her swallow a small Bluetooth capsule that tracked the motility of her stomach and GI tract. The results showed us that she has a condition called gastroparesis, which is basically a super slowly-emptying stomach, and slow intestines. This was a real diagnostic breakthrough, and gave us a new roadmap for diet and medications. The insomnia condition still eluded us, but at least we had one major issue somewhat under control.

By the end of 2023, despite some big bumps in the road, we had a better set of tools for managing my wife’s health. And we even did a little roadtrip from Florida to Pennsylvania to attend a wedding. While in the northeast, we got a chance to scoot into Manhattan afterward and see old friends and family as well.

We ended the year feeling like despite all the hardships, we counted a few wins too.

Freelance hell, year 5.

Way back in January, when I posted my first blog entry of the year, I was feeling a mix of pessimism and optimism. (It seems like a lifetime ago now, given what my wife and I endured this year.) I weighted the pessimism a little more heavily. Not long after that post, work and life seemed to be showing signs of improvement. Then everything started into a a slow spiral downward.

In October, I contracted Covid-19 despite my best efforts to prevent contraction. Then my wife got it from me. A couple days later, she was hospitalized due to a bout of severe IBS-C and had to be admitted to the hospital while sick with Covid. We both recovered somehow, and started to wonder if things were ever going to be back to normal.

By default, I became a nearly full-time caregiver while trying to freelance. I did manage to take on a couple new clients, but the year never took off like I’d hoped it would.

In terms of business and freelancing, I’ve had one steady client for a year and a half now, and it’s satisfying work, but 2022 was yet another year that kept me in the category of “under-employed.” I managed to get another client out in California who represents two companies, and he’s been a real pleasure to work with. I hope that relationship continues in 2023.

Overall though, I have to say I’m not super encouraged by what’s happening in the US economy. The business confidence and pandemic recovery doesn’t seem to be there yet. I depend on the marketing budgets set by companies, and whether or not they feel that new creative efforts are worth spending money on. And even if they did feel flush with new money to spend, I can’t even guarantee that I have a place on their roster of go-to freelancers. All I can do is email them quarterly and remind them that I still exist and I’m available for work. My self-promotional efforts and marketing assets are in good shape, so at least I have that to rely on.

By Thanksgiving, it seemed like the worst of the year was behind us, and the December holidays were overall pretty good. I have no idea what to expecte for 2023. I can only hope and pray for a healthier, calmer year.

To those of you who’ve read this, I wish you a healthy, happy new year. Enjoy!