Good luck / bad luck / good luck / bad luck (Patreon)

Happy December, thank you for your continued support! I'll be working on updating the supporters page and stuff tomorrow.

Image above is another Project Butterfly exploration, silver sharpie on printed photo. 10 points if you recognize the source material!

I've had a weird week full of good luck and bad luck. I'm coming out ahead overall but it's been a bit of a rollercoaster...

On Black Friday things were pretty exciting; the hexaflexagon shirts sold out so quickly that we were able to pre-order some more in time for them to sell out too. That's a welcome bit of cash, as my savings was pretty unhappy about the months I spent unemployed and then getting this thing together...

So I was running around like a crazy person chasing the Dogget in celebration, when CRACK goes my 2nd toe as I catch my foot against the foot of the couch, and the first thought that popped into my head even before the pain hit my brain was "well there goes the tshirt money".

But then I remembered that unlike in 2010 when I broke my foot and scooted around on a rolly chair for a couple months hoping it would heal ok because I had no health insurance and couldn't afford to see a doctor, I totally have health insurance now! Also, after the initial pain subsided it seemed to not be as bad a break as I first worried it might be. 

On the downside there's apparently not much they can do for a broken toe except tape it to the neighboring toe and tell you to stay off it.

On the bright side, I've got this cool job now where I work from home and I am my own boss, and this cool job is going well enough that I can afford to take it easy once in a while. So I took the excuse to spend more time reading in bed, which has been nice. I haven't had enough reading time this year.

The Dogget is unhappy with her diminished walk mileage but we're working more on scent training instead, which she has deemed an acceptable bargain.

The worst part is that I pace a lot when I work, thinking and writing and thinking and taking notes and thinking. Especially if I'm writing, whether it be a video script or an article or music, I'll pace for several hours of the day, between sentences, while considering edits, while imagining my way through the work. It's frustrating to not be able to pace.

Then my next piece of good luck: I had a little bit of bitcoin that had been sitting around for a few years not worth the amount of time it would take me to figure out how to sell it, until recently Bitcoin spiked up to 10k. So I figured I'd look into it.

And it turned out I had a little more than I'd remembered. Enough, in fact, to pay off one of my higher-interest loans and cut down my monthly run rate by about $100. Mega win!

(Though I will keep kicking myself for not taking the time to figure out how to accept the 6.28 bitcoin someone offered me as a donation many years ago after my Pi is Wrong video first came out.)

So I'm a little less in debt, but then it turns out that it costs more to keep all of Vi Hart Headquarters heated, including the office and studio which now has to be heated every day, than I had budgeted for. So in the end everything's about back to even.

And then the best piece of luck of all, that on Dec 1st over 1400 people got together and decided to send money to support my existence! It is very nice to have a promise of stable income to help absorb the ups and downs of life.

Besides reading and musicking and paperwork and budgets and logistics, this week I've been mapping out more of Project Butterfly. It's not going to be an easy one. I do hope it comes together...

For the next couple weeks, though, I'm going to be focusing on the next Vihart video. I might put some spoilers in an update post in the next week.

For tonight, I'm gonna relax with my doggo and continue my exploration of dogs in scifi/fantasy. I just finished Dogsbody (Jones), which I appreciate for the dogness of the narrator's thinking, and I also read The Sirens of Titan (Vonnegut), which I liked but turns out there's not much dog in it, and I'm partway through City (Simak) which is quite interesting both structurally and dogally. 

Ultimate magic dog is still the Disreputable Dog in Lirael and Abhorsen. Other suggestions appreciated!