ACCOZZAGLIA

welcome to interactive LJ. pick and choose what you’d really like to read. enjoy the virtues of no good news. oh yeah.

the Web site service i use for keeping track of my client timekeeping and billing abrputly went sour this afternoon. it may have had something to do with me setting up a job name with brackets — [ ]-style — to help me keep that particular job separate from the rest. evidently, it choked their system.

phoning and emailing the service was useless. i can’t track my expenses or invoice my clients. i was about to send one invoice today for meager money i so desperately need. i feel helpless.

then, this afternoon, i get a call from my contracting agency down in the city. it’s an intraurban long distance call. i tried to phone them back, but suddenly, there’s a block on the line for any calls involving dialing a “1″ first. neither sparkle_vixen nor i make many long distance calls. last month’s bill, between the two of us — charges included with calls — was $30. this month was comparable, if not less. she handles billing. the account is in her name. but she’s really busy this week with work stuff. she isn’t here right now.

compounding that problem further, i was trying to get in touch with my bestest friend, svairini at 5:30pm, as planned, for a rendezvous call we’d planned to make hours before. this call was critical, because she has in storage some critically important paperwork related to my 2002 taxes and income over in her basement. and now, despite trying to alert her in email to our dialing long distance ishoo tonight, i couldn’t get that behind me, either.

for the first time since i got here in October, i’m finally able to begin paying off my beyond past-due bills that simply couldn’t be paid for before now. i simply had no money, no income, no new work, nothing. the worst isn’t over, but i eliminated four of seven outstanding debts this week. too bad that i’ll never, ever, ever have good credit standing in my lifetime, no matter what i do. guess that’s the reward one gets for a) having opportunity denied and economic sustinence retracted because of being different, and b) never getting the chance to learn about finance, the credit system and investing as a kid. i never had a chance, and in the realm of the Experians and the TRWs, there are never second chances.

all this, and as each day slips by, i realise my likelihood for attending university at the U-Dub this autumn quarter becomes more feeble and remote, like being stuck on Voyager 2 as things grow colder.

hell, i didn’t go to bed last night. aside from an hour or two where i tried to catch a nap this mid-morning, i’ve been non-stop. i completed billable client work right on time. i beta-tested a site’s functionality as a courtesy to my contracting employer.

oh yeah, and that rejection letter from yesterday was another little, “hey, you ain’t good enough and we’re really not hiring. We’re just using you as fodder to assess whether our existing folk are being paid what they’re worth, whee.”

i’m extraordinarily busy, trying to infuse peak productivity under inhospitable conditions. there isn’t enough work out there. so i’m re-deploying my solo practise Web site.

did i ever mention how much i loathe building Web sites? i learned the ropes in late 1995 and built several solo freelance and contracting sites in the years since. but for each and every site i designed and built, i never made any substantial cheddar. why? the sites were always for pro bono or low-budget clients. i created these in hopes that making my interactive portfolio shine well enough would do the trick in bringing over the paying clients

oh, wait: i don’t have a B.A. i am not worth being paid for high-end work! of course!

so, in trying to drum up new client work, trying to convince myself that my talent and experience don’t suck, trying to eke out a few dollars from nickel-and-dime stuff and trying to build a crisply simple and clean, but mechanically-complex-for-me Web site, i have so neglected speaking to and spending time with so many important people in my circle — namely my girlfriend here, sparkle_vixen and my girlfriend back east, grsbound. both of them know, as do a few others very close, know precisely my impetus for making a go of this:

it’s been too, too long. something good has to happen from all this constant effort. i can’t afford for it not to. another letdown on such a personally tremendous scale will all but be the end of me as a hopeful, coherent creature.

in just over two months, i’ll be wrested from the realm of being a twenty-something. and despite the myriad and profoundly unique — even earth-shattering — life experiences over the last decade, i have nothing to show for it. except a music library that pales in comparison to where i hoped it to be by now. but hey, no money, no music.

somebody, infuse completion into me, please. i hate thinking that i’m ending up sounding like a young Brando, pathetically lamenting, “i coulda been a contenda” or something.