Well my one remaining shop employee (been around 4-5 years) has cancer, has for a while, I have been letting her work as long as practical but she finally got disability so she is out. My shop has been declining rapidly due to her missing so much work over the last few months, as I am the one and only onsite guy therefore difficult for me to backstop her. Over the last few months the shop has dropped dramatically into the red. My onsite work was barely covering it.
As if an answer to all my atheist prayers, I get a call for a place offering me a fairly solid service contract promising $3k-$4k/mo
I am half braced for it to be some kind of scam or crappy company that never pays its bills. 3 fairly busy weeks later I have 2 checks totaling just over $3K, and they want to sign with me for a 3 year contract.
Then I had a major breakdown of my truck about 40 miles from home. Between the tow and the repairs…almost $2K, basically, my business was broke, and this new gig was in serious jeopardy.
I had a couple thousand set aside in my “holy fuck the world fell apart and I need to pay my bills long enough to find a normal job account” I cashed it out, and bought a new vehicle. With some help from a friend I also managed to get the truck going. In addition to the repairs, this new gig was heavy travel time (paid travel time though, win!)with the old truck I spent about $450 on fuel. New vehicle is a plug in hybrid, much better on gas. So much so, about 2/3 of the car payment is covered by the smaller fuel costs.
So as we speak, I am closing my computer shop of around 13 years and just keeping a handful of my regular onsite business customers and this one large service contract. As long as I dont do anything royally stupid, I have this gig for at least 3 years. I am keeping one of the two occupancies my shop had for a small office, workspace, and parts/tools storage, but its dead as a storefront and I will be removing the signage.
I signed up for uber again just as a stopgap/fill in the slow times gig since the new car is fabulous for it and sometimes the payments from the big gig are a few weeks apart.
So now rather than being a computer shop owner I am more of an independent onsite guy with a handful of solid customers anchored by a very good contract job. Uber makes sure there is grocery and gas money, the big contract is covering the bills, and any other customer calls are the icing on what is unfolding to be a decent cake.
Most of my work is physically harder, I am basically an installer for a big IT place that does network infrastructure for home automation. I also serve as tech support for model home sales offices and construction offices on construction sites.
It has been an odd transition going from stuff that was technically complex and logistical childs play to stuff that is technically on the easy side but requires ALOT more tools, parts, and paperwork, than I could have ever imagined.
And I am most likely breaking up with a g/f soon. Not even going to go into that for now.
So basically new job, new car, dying employee, GF needs to go, and shop closing, and I will need to find a new place to live in the next 30 days or so.
at the same time, I kinda feel like I am being reborn at 48.
