Lost in Translation

This was originally written and posted on this blog on 12/30/2008.

12/31/2009

I started off 2009 by officially launching smalltownchef.com. It’s since gained a modest following – 200 regular posters on the forums and a few thousand regular readers. I post a new recipe every three days, on average, and I’m finishing a draft of a book based on the site – with additional material so that people don’t just say “but it’s all there on the site”. By June I’d left my jobs with Gail and with Butler Hill. Instead, I make money through ads on smalltownchef.com and etherjammer.com, and through contract work in web development, programming, and the occasional data analysis. The ads and the contract work have brought in $80,000 gross this year. Holly, meanwhile, has written a children’s book, is finishing her first novel and is researching a non-fiction book on fairy tales. Alex is in fifth grade and is doing well in school.

After Alex finished his school year in Indiana, the three of us moved back to the coast, where we’ve been living comfortably in a two-story house. When we were evaluating places to move, Holly and I paid special attention to the grade school system, to opportunities for both of us to take classes, and to the ability to form or rejoin social circles once we’d moved. Holly and I both have studies in the house where we can go to concentrate, but the living room is large enough and set up well enough that we rarely need them when we’re working. Our kitchen is modest but nice to work in, and we finally have a dishwasher! We cook nearly every night, but we still reserve the right to go out or order in when we want to. Each of us has a gaming computer that we’re happy with, and the living room has a high-definition television and a collection of games and movies that keeps all three of us satisfied.

I took up running, bicycling, and swimming in 2009, and right now my pants waist size has dropped from 42″ to 36″. I’d like to get that down to 32″, but I’m not stressing too much about it – I’ve learned to accept that I have a broad frame and I’m never going to be svelte. Holly’s also been getting closer to her goal figure, although I still don’t know exactly what that is or how far she has to go. When Alex found out that we were swimming for exercise instead of for fun, he decided to join us, and he’s really enjoying it, although he still wants to play around sometimes.

Moving back to the coast and getting the right amount of exercise have given me the energy and motivation to start being creative again, and I’ve been writing, drawing, and playing music every chance I get. I launched my webcomic “Ecce” in the spring, and it gets a moderate number of readers, about the same number as Small Town Chef. I’m still playing World of Warcraft in moderation; I have five characters at level 80 (Theande, Thaumadzurge, Sisuphe, Maginot, and Takareg) and I’m working on a sixth.

Since we can afford to fly and don’t have any schedule apart from Alex’s school holding us down, we visit both sets of parents more often, and we’ve taken two vacations this year – one to Marshall, MI over the summer, and one cross-country trip that took us to a bunch of places we’ve wanted to visit for a while. (We had to borrow my parents’ PT Cruiser to make that one work!)

Life is pretty good at this point. Next year I’m looking to break six figures, and Holly wants to have her novel published (or bought by a publisher) by the end of 2010. Wish us luck!