The longest job interview ever, Episode XXVII

The title is a loose version of the reality. I’m trying to remember when I started this process, and I think it was the first week of October, around the same time that the north texas va was supposed to resume 100% face to face operations. I’m not sure that’s ever come to pass as far as c&p is concerned, but we’re around six weeks past and I’m still going through the process with VES. Just yesterday I sent in a copy of my professional liability insurance to the recruiter, so presumably my paperwork is finally in the hands of their credentialing.

I can’t remember the precise details of the last time I did this, but I’m confident there are additional hoops to jump through at this point, there almost always are. I indicated a preference to start after December 1st, so there’s still some time to spare. To my recollection, there are usually a few light days that must precede a full schedule so they can ensure you’re know what you’re doing. I get the feeling, at least as far as their admin departments are concerned, that experience counts little. They have a checklist and there will be no wavering.

I haven’t raised my expectations all that high. As little as two or three four hour shifts will probably give us enough additional funds to keep us in the black every month going forward. My intent is to work weekends, presumably giving me eightish four hour shifts a month, and if my calculations are realistic, around 64 DBQs a month if I’m able to fill all those shifts as intended. That would put as around $5K after taxes which should keep us in good trim. Even if it’s only 20% of that estimate, it would be of benefit.

If I can work at the rate I’m hoping to achieve, we should have our cash reserves up where we want them in 6-8 months, and then we can resume the condensed house payoff. I imagine we would be able to get the house paid off in 2-3 years, and then the need to work would be almost nil. I’d likely continue working for discretionary funds, but that would be a nice burden to remove. All of this is based on assumptions, which haven’t served us particularly well in the last year, so I’m not quite ready to pop the champagne.

Lucky friday the 13th

As a nice bookend to today’s office departure, I received an email from VES with my credentialing packet this afternoon. Their payment rates seem improved from before, but they’re still lumping musculoskeletal and opinions together. I ran a few scenarios in my head and anytime you’re talking about bigger exams, fee basis is clearly the better option. At lower numbers they are more competitive, especially for a single DBQ exam. Once you hit their max count of 14 or higher, fee basis often pays double or more what VES would pay.

I’m going to request a schedule that hopefully will keep them from ever giving me those higher numbers, even though that’s my preference when getting paid per DBQ. Anywho, it’s a nice way to end the day/week. I expect I should be able to get some shifts before year’s end, although I haven’t spoken to any of their schedulers yet.

The Scab has been Ripped

I left early this morning in what may have been the last visit to my workplace for the last nine years. I needed to clean out the office of all my personal items and there were quite a few documents for the shred pile. Nothing sinister or incriminating, don’t get your hopes up. It was mostly exam notes and patient labs and the like that can’t just be thrown out in the trash. I tended to hold onto notes until the drawer could no longer manage, mainly in case there were ever follow up questions about exams.

Someone had already been occupying the office, not that I took that personally. I haven’t been in there since late March, so it’s good they’re getting some use out of it. I was also happy to find that all my personal items were still there and unmolested by all appearances. In a moment of pure snarky vengeance (isn’t snarky vengeance the guitarist in Avenged Sevenfold?), I almost took everything including my power strips, but that would have left the current occupant without a functioning second monitor. I should have done it, but I felt like it was a small gesture of professionalism that no one would notice or care about.

I didn’t really feel anything, other than relief that I was able to knock it out in two air huffing trips back and forth to the car. I’m not sure if it was the mask or my lack of more strenuous cardio with the knee issues, but it’s not a feeling I’m very familiar with. I really need to get back to running, but the right knee hasn’t been open to negotiation in several months. I’m sure it was partly the mask, but I’m not convinced my fat ass isn’t partially to blame as well. Aeyong jokingly asked if I cried, and I replied “no, not even close.” I guess the pervading feeling I have at the most recent development was one of mild betrayal.

That’s saying a lot, but I did live under the illusion that people actually cared and paid attention to our efforts. Maybe I’m wrong, but it certainly doesn’t feel that way now. I think the thing that ultimately did us in is the apathy of the career federal employee. Those who are content to make entire careers out of collecting full pay and benefits while doing the bare minimum exist at all levels. Just like there are providers that would do less in a month than I would do in a six hour shift (that’s not exaggeration, it actually happened several times over), there are supervisors with similar productivity ethos. Like I mentioned earlier, it’s probably easier on them to have fewer employees and I’m fairly certain they didn’t lobby for or champion our cause. Probably the opposite.

I tend to never say never, and it won’t surprise me if we’re eventually asked back, but much will depend on how things go with VES. Right now I’m still waiting to hear from their credentialing after sending my collaborative memo on Monday. If it’s like it was in 2016 then it’s not ideal, but I could still do fine with just a few shifts a month. If it’s like Gallegos indicated, they are paying differently now. She didn’t provide details and I’m not sure that her status with VES isn’t different since she’s been a regular with them all along. The best case scenario would be them paying for every DBQ performed, and if that was the case it’s highly unlikely I would ever see a justification to returning to VHA. Only time will tell.

Burnt Cheeto, a Character Description in Two Paragraphs

I’m not sure whether I will make posting these a habit, but today’s writing exercise was satisfying in its snarkdom.

The first thing you noticed was his hair. An odd combination of bird’s nest, aquanet, and poorly executed combover in a dirty blond hue that belied his advanced years. Call it Baba Yaga Blond. A voluminous dark blue suit, adorned with a bold red tie and the requisite small American flag on the lapel projected an apparent steadfast resolve for the patriotic ideal. It was all bluster and misdirection. What would have been a wrinkled and aging visage generously sprinkled with liver spots and crows feet had been smeared with an unflattering tint of orange that could be generously described as burnt Cheeto. Sagging jowls spilled over his collar, bouncing in response to his vociferous orations but with a slight delay as if an unwilling accomplice. Those jowls had seen some shit.

Blessed with enough height that his squishy flesh remained mostly concealed beneath the long swathe of blue, but what was the strange prominence of hard ridges and flat surfaces stretching the otherwise smooth contours over his rear flank? Girdle? One could imagine an army of underlings with plastic sheet rolls running in circles around him, strapping down the sagging flesh before he was wedged into his official blue business sack of office. Was that heavy breathing a COVID residual or just the cellophane corset? Collectively, it challenged one’s senses on multiple levels, falling just short of the visual offense of Baron Harkonnen’s pustule-ridden purulent bulbousness. If only the pandemic had been bubonic, he might have achieved the pinnacle of repugnance.

Strange Vibes

I’m probably overthinking it, but it’s been a strange sequence of days since I got the news fee basis were being let go permanently. I’ve sent a few follow up emails, but so far it’s radio silence, except for Curray’s single word reaction to the news - “pathetic!”. It may be largely due to sending those emails between Friday and Monday, and some people may not be back at work or at least caught up on their emails. I’ve been trying to find out what the clinic operating hours are now, since I think they’re still changed from COVID. All that I really have left is to clear my office out, and at that point I’ll have effectively washed my hands of them. I’m going to hold onto my id and check email occasionally until they tell me I must surrender that as well. I still think there’s a good chance we’ll be back, it’s just going to be a chaotic couple of months with the lame duck session and COVID back on the rise.

The curt dismissal email did have me wondering about Hasan’s intentions. Last year I had to undergo a “random” drug test, and to my knowledge it was the first one in our entire clinic in the eight years I had worked there. It didn’t matter because of course I tested negative, and maybe it was truly random. It’s just that in light of the recent apparent ambivalence it had me wondering if he had taken some of those accusations seriously. I wouldn’t necessarily blame him since he didn’t know me or any of the other accused.

I think I’m mostly overreading people’s behavior as they must surely have plenty on their minds at work and home. I’m giving them a couple more days and if I still haven’t received any responses I’ll probably just go at close of business on a Friday and clear out all my personal belongings. It’s a decent amount of stuff considering I’d been there over nine years. It’s the longest I’ve ever worked in the same specific location, so it seems weird to be possibly saying goodbye. I won’t necessarily miss it or the people, but it’s still a big transition.

Zee Backlog

One of the myriad outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic has been more free time. Significantly more than I had ever planned to have. As it happens, I had an extensive backlog of games that I had never completed and in many cases hadn’t played at all. As I’ve said in other posts, I never got down to the level of even what I would consider mild depression, but it is fair to say that I’ve had intermittent COVID funks where I lost some motivation for my normal pursuits. Most days I’ve got that full schedule of practice, study, and work that I maintain, but there are just days where I feel like doing little to nothing. These are often well suited to games, books, and movies.

So, on that note, I was trying to think of all the games I’ve cleared out of my backlog since COVID-19 began. I had games going all the way back to the launch of the Xbox 360 in 2006 and around the same time with several Steam games. The typical scenario was I would buy first-run games with a new console launch or more often when a bunch of games went on sale during the holidays. It’s a holiday tradition now that retailers will put many triple AAA and other highly rated games on sale at pretty steep discounts. Most years I end up buying a game or two and they’ve just accumulated since I was mostly busy with work and musical pursuits.

With COVID-19 and all the additional time on my hands, I decided to start trying to whittle away at the backlog. So far these are the games that I have completed since then:

Divinity Original Sin 2
Red Dead Redemption
Assassin’s Creed
Gears of War
Battlefield 4
Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition
Wolfenstein II
Shadow of Mordor
Horizon Zero Dawn
Bioshock
Alan Wake
Far Cry 3

These games have all been fun. I’ve generally gone with the standard difficulty level if it was modifiable. This is my normal practice but I have lowered difficulty if I kept dying and had to repeat the same fights ad infinitum. I enjoy exploration, discovery, and story far more than I enjoy any certain game mechanic so it’s an old habit of mine. I don’t really feel a sense of accomplishment in completing a difficult fight as much as I’m looking forward to the next new area for exploration. That’s why I’ve logged so many hours (days) on World of Warcraft despite never raiding and only very briefly being a member of a guild. I’d rather run around the map and find new dungeons, ruins, etc.

I still have an extensive backlog to clear on PC, Xbox, PS, and Switch including:

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition
Bioshock 2
Bioshock Infinite
Dishonored
Batman: Arkham City
Deus Ex: GOTY Edition
Deus Ex: Invisible War
Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Deus Ex: Human Revolution: The Missing Link
Uncharted 4
Uncharted: The Lost Legacy
Assassin’s Creed: Origins
Shadow of War
The Last of Us: Remastered
Game of Thrones (Telltale)
Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Fallout 3
Pillars of Eternity

I’m not including various Kinect games as well as a few driving and sports games. Although these often have career modes, I’m almost always inclined to play the latest versions since they don’t provide me a unique experience like these other RPG and action/adventure type games. I’m also not including a multitude of games I intend to eventually play that I haven’t bought yet.

To make matters worse (or better depending on viewpoint), my new-fangled Xbox Series X is arriving this week and will likely result in the purchase of a few more games to add to the cache. By far the two most anticipated games coming in the near future are Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur’s Gate III. CP2077 will be an Xbox purchase, but I’ll be playing BG III on PC. After that my most anticipated game is probably Elder Scrolls 6, but that’s likely several years off.

I’m thinking I’ll keep working on the backlog preferentially until I get CP2077 because I have a feeling that one will be hard to resist once it’s available next month.

A Light on the Horizon

My regular checking of the headlines since Tuesday finally paid off Saturday morning. The major news outlets reported that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris had clinched Pennsylvania and therefore had 273 electoral college votes and an assured victory in the Presidential election. Soon after, celebrations broke out in the streets around the country and the world. Trump was golfing, but would later respond with several feverish tweets condemning the results and swearing to fight them in court.

I know for myself that it was a weight off my shoulders that I had just become accustomed to over the last four years. I think much of America and the world felt the same. Of course, there are 70 million voters out there who didn’t get the result they wanted and I have a pretty good idea of how they are feeling as well. The President and Vice President Elect’s speeches were about reconciliation and a vision for the future, a healing of our country, and reunification of Americans after four contentious years. It’s going to be a bumpy road at times, but things will get better. They must.

Our democracy and the values held by most Americans had suffered such a blow and we often wondered would we ever see our country as the founders framed it, would we ever again become a beacon of freedom and hope for the downtrodden? I woke today feeling that it was possible once again.

Three days later and still no answer on the election, but a bombshell at work...

The election still hasn’t been decided, with several states still counting ballots and the necessary 270 electoral votes not yet attained by either candidate. That said, former Vice President Joe Biden is sitting in a better position with 253 called electoral votes to 214 for President Trump, and by appearances, he’s doing well enough in a few of the remaining states to push him over the top. To no one’s surprise, the incumbent has been crying foul since election night and has been trying to claim victory multiple times. I won’t describe it any further, it’s being heavily covered by the media and will be well documented in the historical records I’m sure.

Just to add a bit of spice to our lives, I was following up on my credentials packet renewal at work when the clinic chief responded to an email saying that my credentials didn’t need renewal because fee-basis providers weren’t going to be used by C&P going forward. That was it. Abrupt, and with little explanation or attempt to soften the blow. The other people I’ve talked to share my opinion that this isn’t permanent, but it’s hard to predict at this point how long it will last. It was out of character for this person, although I’ve had little interaction with him so I don’t have a great deal of basis to judge how he handled it. I do consider it a failure of leadership to not have informed all the affected fee basis providers as a group.

I’ll probably pursue work with one of the contractors in the interim depending on how this plays out. I was already assuming it would be months or longer before there was any resumption of normal work, so this isn’t beyond the realm of what thought possible. That said, the manner in which the message was delivered strikes a hit against my long term loyalty to the C&P clinic and its leadership. It doesn’t seem that all the years of hard work and the thousands of exams really amounted to much, at least in the eyes of the current leadership.

The held breath before the drop...

It’s Election Day here in the US. The hope is that in twelve-ish or so hours we’ll have a new president-elect due to an overwhelming margin of victory. That’s the hope. The expectation is that we won’t be fortunate enough to get an overwhelming margin of victory and Trump will claim voter fraud and any number of other falsehoods if he isn’t declared the winner. There’s a chance the election won’t be settled for days, weeks, or even months. There’s also the chance that even with an overwhelming margin of victory by Biden that Trump will claim voter fraud, election tampering, etc. Some of us would like to think he might finally eat some humble pie, but why would he at this point? He never has before from what I know. It will be what it will be. I only hope that there isn’t an outright attempt to ignore the will of the people, because who knows what will happen to our society in the aftermath. Large scale demonstrations and riots are likely to erupt if Trump tries to subvert an election in which he’s the clear loser. Justifiably so, but I still worry for our democracy.

On to some marginally better news - I finally got someone in HR that’s responding to my request for help with my retirement savings and it appears they will submit a transaction to correct the mistake. Hopefully within the next few weeks I’ll find out my TSP account has been switched to separated, and if desired I’d have access to those funds. At present, I have no plans to touch them for another six years since I’ll be assessed an early withdrawal fee before then. As mentioned earlier, the plan is to return to full time with Berklee, and hopefully by the time I have used up the rest of my GI Bill benefits, a trickle of work would have come available by then. There are a lot of ifs in that planning, especially considering that currently the COVID pandemic has come back with a vengeance, and appears to be setting new records of morbidity and mortality. It’s tarnished the luster of returning to work in the near term a bit.

We may just continue to tread water until it seems we’re on the far end of the pandemic, which could be a year from now or even longer. I have around $20k in my deployment related TSP account, which should take less of a tax hit if I needed to make a withdrawal for an acute need. Hopefully the housing allowance from the GI Bill will be enough to keep us in the black for the next year or until I get some amount of recurring work again. All that said and even with the election misgivings, we’re feeling a bit more stable now and are settling in to the present new normal. We’ll see how long it holds.

The frustration is ever present...

After a few back and forths with VES, they requested a collaborative agreement memo signed by a physician, including their license number. This differs slightly from what I used in 2016, which was just a memo signed by a physician with their name/title printed on it. As that memo was signed by the as of then not psychotic former coworker, I knew I needed an updated memo. Thankfully, my present supervisor in my dormant fee-basis job was not only willing, but very prompt in filling out said document and returning it posthaste. Cry fury, and loose the snares of obtuse administrators improvising further obstacles over which to jump.

Now, they needed a physician licensed in Texas for the collaborative agreement. A fact they failed to mention when specifying the requirements of the memo. As luck would have it, many physicians in federal service take jobs in states different from where they are licensed. It was fairly typical in the military and I’ve noticed the same trend in federal service. To compound that problem, I’m not especially social at work, and there are only a few doctors I would even consider asking. Right now I’m still waiting on a response from the only other physician in that clinic I would feel comfortable asking. The lack of response is starting to feel like a refusal, but I’m going to give it a bit more time.

I think the requirement is nonsense because my colleague who is now working overseas, got a memo from the same doctor and apparently it was good enough for that scenario. What makes overseas and stateside different for an informal relationship where the physician just states they “are available to answer questions” is lost on me. I don’t think it matters, I think it’s just another clerk throwing up unnecessary requirements so they feel better and can shift blame if something comes back on them. This happens time and time again with credentials and other HR people. There are many benefits to being a part of a big organization like the federal government, but this is probably the biggest downside. You’re often at the mercy of an entry level admin type who is some combination of incompetent and ambivalent.

To add insult to injury (that’s overstating it a bit, but I’m going for dramatic effect), I’ve been trying for over three years to get my TSP account (401Kish) changed to reflect that I was separated from regular federal employment in 2017. Without this status change, I have no control over the account and can’t contribute funds, rollover the account, or make withdrawals. In effect, my account is frozen and out of my control. It’s not a huge acute issue at this precise moment, but if we had a financial emergency (especially considering our current situation), we’d be unable to use these funds. I’m hoping to leave it untouched until I’m 59 1/2 and can withdraw without penalty. But, if we really needed to, we could withdraw everything and payoff the house with some money left over. We’d take the tax hit and an additional 10% early withdrawal fee (which would suck), but we’d be able to shift our monthly budget by $1500 in the black since we wouldn’t be paying a mortgage any longer. I’m currently experiencing a similar scenario with the VA where my inquiries are either ignored or get to participate in the admin hot potato email game.

On hopefully more positive news, I’m strongly considering resuming my studies at Berklee. Depending on any developments with the job front, I can go back to full time studies and derive a $900 monthly housing allowance, not to mention the yearly stipend for books. I have 14 months of GI Bill remaining, so this should get us through another year of employment uncertainty. Hopefully by then, some trickle of work would have returned for fee basis examiners. It’s what I’ve been needing to do anyway, and the more I’ve thought about it, I really need to get my ass in gear and submit my application for the guitar dual major and get as much done while I have GI Bill benefits remaining. I may not be able to complete all requirements, but I should be able to close the gap significantly. I think the private lessons requirement of 9 semesters is the one I’ll most likely be lacking when my benefits are used up.

I’ll cross that bridge when I find it. I like this plan because it at least puts on more stable ground financially and I’ll be more or less in the driver’s seat again in regards to my work status.

A little bit of movement on the workfront...

I had reached out to a coworker from the VA who had switched to fee basis a few years back and had been languishing in the furlough twilight along with me. She had contacted me back in Juneish or so and asked if I had heard anything about return to work at the VA. She had originally put me in touch with VES back in 2016 and helped facilitate my working there at the time. Once I made the switch to fee basis, I didn’t see a good reason to keep a schedule at VES because I had all the work and income that I desired.

After we texted in June I asked her to let me know when she went back to work for VES since she had several exams already on deck. I hadn’t heard from her and I knew the VA was supposed to be back at 100% capacity as of October 6th, so I sent her a text saying “Que Paso?” I had also reached out to a recruiter that emailed me in April but never responded to my follow up. This time around, after three days, he replied, saying there was no work in my area. She had also responded and said they were hurting for examiners right now and were paying bonuses. I told her what the recruiter said and she didn’t think it sounded right.

She went through her recruiter (she’s working overseas) and he forwarded my info to the supervisor of domestic recruiting. Lo and behold, the recruiter who told me there was nothing now needed my information. It was a generic email that didn’t acknowledge our exchange from one week prior. I’ve found these recruiters (at least some of them) are similar to some of the folks in HR and credentials. They appear to perform the minimum requirements, but don’t expect much and you won’t be disappointed.

I decided not to mention the now ancient history email and just responded as if it was the first I had received. A few hours later I heard from someone in their admin section, requesting training certification before they could schedule me. That was Friday morning and I responded within two hours. I’m now waiting to hear back, but at least this is finally progress. I haven’t heard anything about details - where they need exams, how many, how often, etc. I’m hoping I can get something similar to what I did in 2016 - about four hours on Saturday and Sunday mornings. The weekend is irrelevant to us since we don’t work or do anything else specific on any given day, and traffic is generally much more bearable.

I’m not holding my breath, though. I won’t be shocked if it’s something like - we have Austin and Houston, but nothing in Dallas right now. Which doesn’t seem likely given that C&P face-to-face exams were shutdown nationally for several months, but I’m trying to keep my expectations low. If I can get that two days a week schedule, I think it’s reasonable to assume I could earn around $2K per weekend, which is about what I would expect on a single workday as fee basis. That would be roughly $8K a month, $5500 after taxes. Not as good as I made with fee basis, but more than enough to keep us comfortable. That said, just 20-30 DBQs a month ($2-3K) should be enough to keep us comfortably in the black for the monthly ledger. We’re trying to maintain that positive cashflow, but there are always unplanned expenditures that just marginally dip the budget into the red.

The hope is that I can get this part time work from VES to hold us over until operations resume for fee basis with the VA. I have to acknowledge that day may never come again, or at least not in the way it used to be. I’ve decided this time around to maintain at least a minimal working schedule with VES so that I always have options in case something like this happens again. Hopefully things are slowly looking up. The pandemic hasn’t gone anywhere and there are still significant numbers of uninfected. At least now procedures have been updated in most healthcare and other public facilities so we can return to some semblance of normal operation.

RIP Eddie Van Halen, 1955-2020

This year has just kept us reeling. It’s still too early to process and the pervasive undercurrent of numbness leaves me feeling disconnected like all the other endless bad news. It can’t be overstated how important Eddie was to rock music and the guitar. Often held up there with Jimi Hendrix as the biggest milestone players in the history of guitar, I’ve always felt Eddie’s influence was more pervasive. There were definitely more Eddie clones in the years following his debut album when he single-handedly turned rock music upside down. Most rock fans, especially guitarists, can still remember the first time they heard Van Halen I and Eddie’s rock guitar manifesto, Eruption. I was around 11 years old, and my sister was blasting that first album in her room. I remember just thinking that this was something otherworldly, I couldn’t conceive these sounds as emanating from one player and one guitar. It still blows my mind a bit, even forty plus years later.

Eddie has always been one of my Mt. Rushmore guitarists, going back all those years, even before I decided to pick up the instrument. He was the total package - rhythm, groove, touch, tone, melody, harmony, riffs, composition. Eddie never seemed to approach the instrument casually, he was always driven by a greater need than most of us ever possess or can understand. The stories of Eddie sitting in his room, playing the guitar for twelve hours straight, may strike some as apocryphal, but I’ve never doubted them. One only need listen to that first album and understand he had been playing less than ten years to appreciate his dedication to the instrument.

The guitar and music have gone in myriad directions since those early days, and in many ways popular music has left those 70’s and 80’s icons behind, but Eddie’s influence remains today and will persist into the future. Music lost a champion and icon and it will never see his like again. RIP Eddie, your spirit will always remain.

Ten Years Gone

As of today, I have been officially retired from the Army for ten years. It’s been a fairly busy period of time and given a fair accounting, overwhelmingly positive on a personal level, if not in the national and international scope of things. I spent the first six and a half years or so continuing to work full time, and then switched to fee basis/part-time work about three and a half years ago. Despite the pandemic and forced layoff, I still think that decision was the right one to make. The three years of earning double for half the time made significant progress towards paying off our home and reaching our long term financial goals.

We haven’t neared the finish line as closely as planned for this point in time, but we still hold out hope that this temporary setback will eventually just be a historical footnote. I can say that there have been positive discoveries made in the context of the layoff. It’s not a big change to our philosophy, but we’ve learned to further appreciate the value of financial stability. Also, dialing back the continuous consumption has had little negative affect and it’s made me realize just how much fulfillment is available in what we already have. In a peripherally related issue, getting away from essentially all social media (FB, twitter, instagram) has had little downside in my estimation. Those mediums could offer occasional (and very temporary) entertainment, but they never offered anything of lasting value. And here lately, the constant daily onslaught of misery and controversy (especially twitter) just began to wear me down. I don’t miss it a bit.

We’ve learned how adequate (or not) our pure retirement income is against the cost of living. At present it’s a bit short, although as said before, some real belt-tightening might allow us to correct the course. The additional money from paying off the mortgage will make staying in the black a bit easier. Even at present, just a couple full days of clinic would be enough to keep that monthly ledger positive, so hopefully, in the not too distant future, I might get a little trickle of work to set the ship level.

On the creative side of things, in some areas, it’s felt like very incremental progress, but progress nonetheless. I should mention the considerable time I’ve spent at Berklee which has been a great boon to my artistic development, although I’m on an extended break at present. I still plan to return, but I want to shift my focus to guitar and I’m still slowly working towards what I consider a satisfactory audition. I have until 2025 to use my GI Bill benefits, and since I’ve already used around 75% of them, I should still be on track.

I’m not sure I’m where I would have wished to be on guitar and piano especially, but I can say that I didn’t necessarily expect I would have started on drums, bass, vocals, and songwriting as well. I also wouldn’t have thought my pursuits would turn towards writing and drawing, much less resuming my long procrastinated study of Korean. Things continue to inch forward a day at a time, but that they inch forward is the point. I’m happy with where I’m going (and maybe not totally unhappy with where I’m at creatively, either) and I still wake up every day looking forward to the work ahead.

The family is doing okay, as well as could be expected I suppose. We’re not any younger, but we’re holding in there I think. Ironically, our lifestyle was already suited to the pandemic since we’re homebodies with no social circles to speak of. The only inconvenience for us was delaying some routine medical care, concerts, and being more judicious about trips to the store. Otherwise, it’s situation normal here in the Hightower holdfast. We said goodbye to our sweet girls Lucy and Bridget, and still miss them all the time. We already had Arya by the time I retired and not long after we said goodbye to Bridget five years ago we added Skittles to our pack. A chihuahua mix, she’s the princess in the house and gets the lion’s share of the attention, although we don’t fail to shower our other two girls with affection.

My hopes for the future are largely unchanged. I want to continue working on my creative pursuits every day. I still hope that at some point I’ll spend more time in a purely creative headspace instead of practicing and developing my technique, but I expect that will always be part of the daily rituals. I hope to at least reach a level of competency (on the drums especially) where I can perform and record the sort of music I hear in my head. I’m closer to that on guitar, but there’s still a ways to go. Eventually, my goal is to combine the various disciplines of music, words, and art into cohesive works that tell compelling stories. I’ll get there, even if it takes a long time. I feel like this period of my life is when I can really create the works I have always needed to make. I don’t regret any part of my life, but it would be untrue to characterize my military service or medicine as my calling. These have been challenging and at times rewarding endeavors, but my creative efforts are where my true self lives.

As long as it’s available and I’m able, I’ll probably continue to earn an income to keep us afloat first and foremost, but also to have a comfortable discretionary budget for the quality of life expenses. As probably stated before, I hope we can get back on track and build our cash reserves back up and then pay the rest of the mortgage off. At that point, one decent shift a week would keep us pretty comfortable, methinks.

Looking ahead, it’s hard to surmise where we might be in ten years. I’ll be sixty-three, just having become eligible for my VA retirement (paltry as that may be) and about four years away from social security (if that hasn’t been stolen by then). I assume we’ll have the house fully paid off, and I’d say the odds are we’ll still be right here although might change as well. My main goal with writing is to continue to improve and just create some compelling stories. It would be the proverbial icing on the cake if that would ever reach a level of quality that someone would be willing to publish it. It would be a second cake with sprinkles on the icing to ever derive any sort of income from it. Still, I have to acknowledge that it is actually a goal. Musically, maybe I’ll actually be able to play those milestone songs (you know who you are) by then. A man can dream…

Progress at work?

In an unexpected development this morning, when I went to check my work email I had a request for a medical opinion with two, count ‘em, two DBQs. We’ve already begun the planning process for retiring to the French Riviera, hold my calls.

Ahem, I’ll dial back the enthusiasm a tad and just say that it’s nice to get any work at this point. It was also a decent function check to make sure all my work programs are still accessible and functional. A few of the steps were a bit of a pain and there have been some updates to the forms and programs since I last used them in April. All that said, it was still much quicker than driving across town for about five minutes of actual work. Ok, maybe ten.

I’ve been receiving regular VA emails (directed to Veterans) stating that all C&P locations are open for face-to-face exams nationwide, although it makes it sound like exams are predominately being performed by contractors. I haven’t received any sort of requests or notification from the FWOPC or any contractors (mainly VES if it were going to happen) at this point, but that may be a reflection of the slow gears of gummit work. Today’s medical opinion was from a January exam, so obviously, the pandemic hasn’t caused VBA to speed up by any means. Still, it’s nice to have anything happen. I had checked the clinic schedules earlier this week and it seems that at least for most of the FTEs, their schedules are filling up. Hopefully, this will gradually trickle down to the fee basis providers.

It's been a bit...

…since the last update and a few things have changed. I’ve resumed pursuit of my seven (eight?) disciplines, including a resumption of writing and drawing. I’ve started to settle into a six day workweek so to speak. I practice drums, vocals, acoustic guitar, drawing and writing on M-W-F, and on T-Th-Sa I practice drums, keys, elec guitar, bass, drawing, and writing. I also started studying Korean again but decided to go back to the very beginning of the Pimsleur lessons. I do this in conjunction with my elliptical workouts, which are every day at present. (goldarned knee doncha know) I consider Sunday my day off, although I tend to get in some more writing and drawing that day as well. It’s open for me to completely fuck off if I want to.

Getting back into writing has been good so far, although I’ve yet to really engage in any “proper” writing. It’s been comprised of administrative and transcription tasks. I finally got all the bookmarked (booktaped?) notes from Judith Flander’s Victorian Home book, including several additional pages of notes that seemed useful as I went through it. I need to do that for Life in a Medieval Town as well. In the process, it became more apparent that my Scrivener organization system was lacking. I started the process today of trying to categorize research and story components into a more understandable and efficient system.

Ideas keep coming for the story and I continue to follow the practice of just dictating these into my notes app on the phone, but now I need to start filing these ideas in the appropriate areas and then doing the actual follow up work, whether it’s crafting a scene, conducting more research, etc. I feel like I already have the bones of a compelling story, but the real work still lies ahead. I plan to approach this methodically with concurrent study in my various writing courses as well as reading both nonfiction and fiction that will support the work. I’m planning on trying Brian Lee Durfee’s approach of choosing several books by authors whose style I want to at least partially draw from in the work. His systematic analysis of their techniques is an interesting approach, and although I’m not sure how well it will work for me, my analytical brain finds favor with it. I’ll be taking a look at their typical chapter layouts, dialogue length and positioning within a page/chapter, character introductions, exposition, etc.

I haven’t decided on the authors yet, although I’m likely to pick two of his - Robert Jordan and George R.R. Martin. I want to pick at least one Victorian-era novel, whether Brontë, Dickens, Doyle, etc. I also want to pick at least one of the authors whose humor I’ve enjoyed - Harry Harrison’s Stainless Steel Rat, Douglas Adams, Scott Lynch, Terry Pratchett, etc. I wouldn’t want humor to overpower the tone, but I definitely love the stories that include at least a dash of levity.

And in today’s “critical for world peace” update, I managed to snag a pre-order for the new Xbox Series X console. Akin to the oh so pleasurable concert ticket buying experience, I bounced around multiple websites across multiple devices and had a false start on my phone where I got to address confirmation only to be told they couldn’t ship to my country (US). Thankfully, that incomplete order remained in my shopping cart on the MS store, and I was able to complete the transaction on my desktop about thirty minutes into the pre-sale. Based on early comments online, there are a lot of dissatisfied customers unable to get through, although as per usual, this doesn’t necessarily reflect a representative sample of customers.

After MS announced their purchase of ZeniMax Media (including Bethesda, id, and several others) I was planning on trying to buy MS’s subscription plan where you get the console and the game pass for $35 a month over two years. With the addition of Bethesda (Elder Scrolls, Fallout), id (Doom), and the others, that means several more of my favorite games would be available. As it is, I’ll probably wait until I’ve finally cleared out that games backlog before I consider subscribing. My two most anticipated games for the near future (Baldur’s Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077) won’t be available on all access anytime soon regardless. I assume BG is PC exclusive at least at first and that would be my preferred version, CP might actually be more enjoyable in the home theater. I definitely enjoyed Witcher 3 in that manner.

Figuring out the new norm

I’m not sure there’s ever going to be a “norm” that will last for a significant amount of time, probably moreso from external factors than internal. I finally started to dabble back in writing again starting yesterday. It took me a bit to remember where I was at in the process. One issue is that I was a bit more active in the Joyce Carol Oates’ master class on short stories through MasterClass.com and because I didn’t renew my membership, that class is temporarily unavailable. I think I’ve decided to go back to the beginning of the James Hynes course on Audible and see where it goes from there. I have several writing courses that I’ve acquired and yet to complete. The past two days I’ve spent most of my time slowly transcribing the notes I had made in the Judith Flanders book on the Victorian Home. I still have a ways to go on that task.

I’ve approached drawing sort of the same way, although I haven’t gone back to the beginning. I think I need to pick one course of instruction and follow it through until the end. My plan is to do that with writing as well, although I tend to sprinkle in some work on my novel in progress. The writing courses involve a lot of practical exercises, so when it makes sense I try to write something that may be of use in the novel.

I still haven’t resumed playing bass, and I suppose that’s the final piece of the puzzle. Initially, there was probably some of that COVID funk that was reducing my motivation to practice, but it’s persisted at least partially from a desire to avoid further repetitive strain injuries. One nice recent change is that I’ve had less of the nagging elbow issues as in the past, but I’m still practicing guitar and drums as much as I ever have. I don’t know if it’s just that these issues have needed this much time to mostly heal, or maybe a combination of other factors that I wasn’t considering, namely how I typed at work. I never thought it was much of an issue, but I was noticing some of the symptoms with prolonged reports when I was standing with my elbows bent at 90 degrees. Not sure, I suppose I’ll see when I get back to work.

All that to say I need to get back to practicing some bass. I’m not sure which day is best, maybe the electric guitar day. The only issue there is that I also practice piano that day, so maybe I need to practice bass on my acoustic guitar day when I also practice vocals and drums. I may give it a run today and see how I feel.

Back to the Infrequent...

…updates I suppose. Nothing monumental has happened in the past month. There has been slow progress on the work front. I’m not sure if it was within the last month that the director sent an email stating that VANTHCS would return to full operations with incremental steps for routine face to face encounters with a planned 100% restoration of services by October 6th. I’m not tracking the play by play, but it seems they’re on schedule at this point.

All that said, that doesn’t mean fee-basis will be needed in C&P in that same timeframe. Our department chief and program analyst had sent emails to the FTEs notifying them that face to face examinations would resume so they would be back in the clinic full time in the upcoming weeks. I responded to this email saying I knew that didn’t mean fee basis would be needed for quite a long time and they essentially confirmed this and expressed appreciation for my patience.

The unknown factors here are whether they will be able to stick to the plan and how quickly there will be a resumption of the normal flow of exam requests from VBA. Until they start getting a normal flow that exceeds the FTEs capability, it’s not likely we’ll see any request for fee-basis exams. My feeling for a long time (and probably expressed here previously) was the end of the year at best, and Dr. Potu (Chief of Ambulatory Care) had already expressed this timeframe as well. If anything, I could see them asking us to help out during the holidays as there’s always a shortage of providers since everyone wants to go on vacation, although it’s hard to say how that will be affected by COVID. If travel remains sketchy, those leave requests may drop off quite a bit.

I still think it will be well into next year before we can expect a resumption of full activities and fee basis numbers reaching anything near where they were at their peak. I hope I’m wrong, and I don’t necessarily need the desired workload to make a difference in our budget. One good day a month would be enough to put our monthly ledger in the black, and two days would make things comfortable. This wouldn’t facilitate the faster mortgage payoff schedule, but at least it would allow us to slowly accrue some cash reserves and give us some breathing room. My hope is we can get back at least to my normal salary limit, which would allow faster mortgage payoff, although it might take 2-3 years instead of the planned 12 months we were previously on track to achieve.

In other developments, I’ve started studying Korean and drawing again in the past week. I decided to go back to the beginning in Korean, and I’m still trying to figure out my battle rhythm with drawing. I had been bouncing around several different instruction programs and I’m starting to think I need to pick one and just stick with it through completion before moving on to the next thing. I have multiple training programs I plan to complete as I go along. Notice I didn’t mention writing. I still plan to start writing again, I’m just looking for the right window and motivation.

Although it’s incremental and often hard to quantify, I feel there has been progress in my musicianship, mainly drums, guitar, and keys. The downpicking drill based on Tommy Emmanuel’s fast run from Endless Road is definitely paying off, albeit slowly. Drumming has felt slower, but my added focus on kick pedal is slowly reaping rewards. I started alternating drill days with song days where I just play songs so I can apply some of these techniques, and I think that’s helping. Many of the drills I practice are isolated and don’t prepare you for the application within a song where all the other limbs are involved.

I need to start practicing bass again and my vocal drills have been functional but not really stretching my capabilities and I need to start singing some actual songs again. I’m not necessarily happy there was a drop off in some disciplines in light of the mild COVID funk, but I can understand it, and at least I kept applying my most primary disciplines. Not to mention, that game backlog has continued to shrink, so there’s that.

I just finished Divinity Original Sin 2 yesterday, and I’ll probably finish off Horizon Zero Dawn next and then I’ve got to decide what to tackle after that. I’m thinking Demon Souls although I realized today I might not be able to play that or Fallout 3 on my PS4, at least using the disc-based versions I own. I think there are versions if you have a subscription to Playstation Now, so I might look into that option.

Life is pretty good, all things considered. I’m not happy losing a significant chunk of earning potential, but we’ve managed to stay afloat for several months and with a few more adjustments to the discretionary expenses we could probably do it indefinitely. I’ve gotten into more cooking with the time off but the downside is that my waistline has grown with my cooking skills. It doesn’t help that I’m having a flare-up with my right knee again and I’m unable to run.

To add insult to injury, I had been trying to reintroduce push-ups and situps to my regimen so I could recover some muscle mass and stave off another ravage of aging. As luck would have it, I strained something in my lower abdomen and I’m hoping it’s just a delicate atrophied muscle and not a hernia waiting to happen. Location wise it could totally be an inguinal hernia. I’m not sure but I think it’s the same side in which I had hernia surgery as an infant and I doubt they used mesh back then. I’m hoping it’s just a muscle strain and I can resume activity in the coming weeks. One of the greatest frustrations of aging (besides becoming progressively more gray and squishy) is that your body starts to betray you and things that you are mentally and psychologically ready to do become difficult to impossible due to injury and declining function. Still, it could be a lot worse.

Speaking of, I’m essentially done with social media. After shutting down FB completely (two times now, most recently in June) I went ahead and pulled the trigger on twitter and Instagram as well. This was another decision based on the sum total effect of interaction and they both are responsible for bringing a lot of negativity that I can’t control. My political leanings are progressive and liberal and I’ll continue to support those candidates and causes, but I just can’t tolerate the day to day social media drama any longer. Every day is a new deplorable act, quite often by the nominal leader of the country and it’s easy to despair. I’m not sure the US as a country can recover from the damage it has sustained (and not just in the past four years), and although I make my best efforts to contribute, there seems to be no shortage of people who are willfully ignorant, obtuse, and have no regard or empathy for their fellow human beings. I hope we can overcome the hatred, greed, and racism running rife at present, but I have my doubts. I don’t endorse much that the catholic church says, but they got the seven deadly sins right.

A Decent Week

Among the “highlights” - had my VA PIV card renewed for the fourth time, so I’m good for another three years, and this marks my nine-year anniversary (albeit a month early) with VANTHCS. Ironic that I mark the occasion while being laid off at present. I’m remaining optimistic that I’ll eventually be able to return to work and continue pushing forward to our midterm financial goals and then settle into what will hopefully be the indefinite future work schedule of one to two days a week for a total of four to eight days a month. After the mortgage is paid off, this should keep us comfortably in the black with a generous discretionary income.

Yesterday marked my fifty-third trip around the sun, shared with a few musical heroes including Kate Bush and Geddy Lee the day before. I cooked some enchiladas that turned out better than the first attempt last week. I decided to forego homemade tortillas and enchilada sauce this time, and used steak meat instead of pork. I was much more satisfied with the result. Some sprinkled avocado and lettuce on top helped complete the effect. The tortillas and enchilada sauce are easy to make, but they add extra time and I honestly didn’t think the recipe suffered using the premade. Later today I’m going to make a belated birthday cake, trying my hand at red velvet this time.

My birthday was one of those mornings where I had gone to bed early and then awoke around 2 am, unable to get back to sleep, and ultimately surrendered and got up. I decided to make some effective use of my time by attempting the texturing step of my very drawn out drywall repair project. Not a resounding success because I don’t think the pattern I laid down was exactly right for the existing knockdown texture from the home builder. It looks better than smooth drywall mud, although there were a few spots where I did get some flat effects that I didn’t want. Being that the repairs are on the garage wall and the back corner/closet of my drum room, I’m probably going to accept them as is and paint over them.

The result will not be professional to the extent that you can’t tell there was every a patch there, but I think they’ll fly for now. We’re not planning on ever selling the house now, so the only people it would bother would be me and Aeyong. She hasn’t uttered a word so far, so I’m thinking she won’t really care. I’ll get her feedback once it’s done. If she absolutely hates it I might try a bottle of the spray-on texture, which I think might make the process a bit easier.

I have several more DIY projects in mind, including a few more steps in the whole house network project, and then I’ve got some ideas to improve our storage and tool organization in the garage. This will be time and bank balance dependent. Much later on and contingent on a return to work I have plans for expanding the home theater to Dolby Atmos (arguably overkill, but still), making some further upgrades to the home network including a proper server, power over ethernet, and upgrading to a 10gigabit switcher. None of this is essential, and definitely in the discretionary category.

I should probably also mention that during this increased period of DIY activity, I’ve taken an unplanned break from practicing. It started based on although the clutter and mess in the drum room but continued based on the shift of my daily energies to multiple tasks that ultimately sapped the energy I desire to effectively practice. It’s only temporary, and after having taken breaks in the past (mostly to heal from repetitive strain issues), I know that there’s a value in stepping away for a bit. Once I get this current DIY project behind me, I’ll get back into my normal schedule. I’m close at present, but there’s still some painting, finishing touches, and decluttering ahead.

Another post in the recent "flurry"...

I’m not sure what’s motivating me to post more after months of silence, maybe it’s just taking time for things to sort of settle with the big shift in lifestyle. As mentioned before, there have been more cooking and DIY activities as of late. Although these aren’t completely new, I’ve definitely had more time to engage in these activities. Many things have been put off for years when I was working because I used my free time for music practice primarily, and never felt motivated to get the gears turning on larger tasks.

With this latest round of projects, I’ve been approaching them incrementally. With rare exception, I have certain daily activities I will always engage in - walking the dogs, exercise, basic maintenance like showering and washing clothes, and usually practicing a few instruments. My more recent DIY projects have included whole house ethernet including moving the modem and router to upstairs locations as well as upgrades to my switching system. I’ve also made some minor changes/upgrades to the home theater with the addition of a speaker wall plate and ensuring all the devices have wired ethernet courtesy of the new router location. In the process, there’s been a fair amount of running cables through the attic and down through walls, resulting in a fair amount of damage to the drywall in the garage and drum room especially.

This has necessitated the purchase of some new tools and supplies so I can hopefully by the time I’m finished have a decent result that at least looks passable if not like new. I know that’s achievable, but my recent experience hasn’t elevated my skills to the level of a professional. All this rehashing to say that it’s satisfying to pick a goal for any given day and accomplish it without any great snags. Yesterday was a decent day in that regard. One of the casualties of my recent cable relocations in the home theater was the original HDMI cable for the projector that had been there since we moved in seven years ago. Too many twists and kinks corrupted the signal, so it was time to replace it. Our attic compares favorably to a suburban squeeze sauna Mirkwood forest, and the area over the home theater is bramble central. Thankfully the total distance of the cable run from equipment rack to projector is relatively short (less than ten feet in the actual room), but getting there and getting the cable through the particular openings in the wall/ceiling is akin to being hogtied while trying to play twister on a tightrope over a bed of liquid hot magma.

I did discover an easier way to get the cables through the projector mast (read - I had routed the original cable through a narrow opening that wasn’t the intended and much easier route) and so after wrestling with the cables a bit I managed to get them where they needed to go with an adequate amount of slack. I also ran some CAT 6 cable along with the new 4K HDMI for a few reasons. One, the projector has an ethernet jack that I originally thought was for connectivity and firmware updates, but now I’m thinking it’s more for control devices. The other advantage to having ethernet there is that if I eventually get an HDMI balun, it will allow me to send the video signal as well as IR and a few other control schemes via just the ethernet cable which is easier to run and more resistant to damage than the HDMI cable.

All that rambling to say that I managed to pull it off and the home theater is back to full functioning. I still have some house cleaning to do on the wall (missing a plate for a new hole) and I’ve got future upgrade plans that I’ll address in the years to come. I had thought of hiring an audio/video installer to handle an upgrade to ATMOS ceiling speakers, but after all this crawling around I think I might be able to handle it myself. But that’s a project for a way down the road and not until I return to some sort of employment.

I’m going to piecemeal the remaining tasks which are initially finishing the drywall repair and then I start focusing on clean up/organization of the video room and server closet.

The Retirement Mindset

This will be a brief discussion as I’m not sure what that means, and I’m not currently planning on shifting to the retirement mindset anytime soon. My long term plan has always been to pay off the mortgage and remain debt-free before we think about a self-sustaining income/lifestyle. Due to the COVID-19 layoff, we’ve been granted the opportunity to explore those realities sooner than planned.

Thus far, it seems that if we decided to really buckle down and eliminate most if not all discretionary spending, then we’re already capable of living on my pensions alone. Notice the plural. The pension I draw due to my service-connected disabilities has been a key source of income now that I’m not earning any sort of a normal salary. We, fortunately, had a bit of an emergency fund, just because our checking balance had built up to a decent level by the time of the layoff. That balance has been slowly dropping, but there’s also been a great deal of arguably discretionary spending as mentioned in the last post.

We’re going to try and cut way down on that for the next few months and see if we can get that balance crawling back upwards. At our present payoff level (essentially the minimum), our mortgage should be paid off in about five and a half years. We had been paying it off at about three and a half times the required amount for the three years since I switched to fee basis, so we made quite a dent in the principal. We’ve been paying the mortgage off since late 2013, so we’ve managed about twenty-five year’s worth of payments in under seven years so far. Once the mortgage is paid off, that should free up about 1.5K in monthly expenses. We’ll still have the rather high property taxes and insurance that are just part of living where we do. I sometimes wish they had a state income tax and would pass on some relief to property tax rates, but I doubt that will happen anytime soon. Our property taxes and insurance are the equivalent of many people’s rent.

The biggest concern with the reduced income is if we get hit by a large financial requirement like home/car repairs, major dental/medical expenses, etc. If we had a few of those in succession, we could quickly drain the remaining cash balance we have at present. If I’m able to return to work in the next year or so (hope), then the goal is to build the cash reserves up a bit more and then work on paying off the mortgage. If I’m able to sustain the work level I had previously, this should be manageable in about two years. Having the mortgage paid off will give us quite a bit more breathing room. At that point, any work that I did would be mostly for discretionary income purposes. I can see working one day a week indefinitely at that point.

So, I don’t know if I’ve adopted the retirement mindset just yet because I’m hoping to be able to return to work and if I’m being honest, I don’t want to completely cut out the ability to earn discretionary funds by virtue of the odd shift here and there.