The Laughing Wolf

Anniversaries and Changes

About one year ago my job at NASA went away. Depending on how you count it, about seven months ago I started this blog. Both issues are important, at least to me, and both have relevance to what is to come.

I phrase my leaving NASA that way very deliberately. My work there was as a contract employee, and the company which employed me lost the contract. The company that was to take over the work never made me an offer, and in point of fact refused to tell me if they were even going to make an offer despite a direct question. Net result was that I was stuck in DC when the contract ended and technically worked two days for free because there was no contract in place. This was just a technicality, however, in that my employer saw to it that I was taken care of. At any rate, I came home and was unemployed. I will note that the new company has had 100 percent turnover in commercial space outreach in less than a year, which says all that needs be said.

To be honest, I never intended to go back to full-time freelancing, or at least not yet. The year past has seen me up for two very nice jobs: one in Minnesota and one in Wisconsin. I accepted the Wisconsin position last spring, but in June/July that job went away because of internal strife between the outfit that hired me and the part of higher headquarters they were under.

None of this would be bad except that I turned down both freelance work and jobs while all this was going on. Had I planned on going full-time freelance, I would have done things very differently.

This blog got started courtesy of Joe Katzman at Winds of Change, my Blogfather. The short version is that when the Maine Teacher’s controversy came up I decided to investigate it myself and did so. John Ringo and some others introduced me to Papa Joe, and my pieces on that story were posted at Winds of Change. Joe encouraged me to continue writing and I decided to start my own blog so I could post things that did not seem to me to be right, or good enough, for Winds of Change.

This has been a lot of fun, and I have been able to do things denied me for far too long. It has allowed me to investigate, to pontificate, to editorialize, and to elucidate. I haven’t been shot (yet, Ed.) for my bad puns and word play, and have found that some even like it. I have not been able to do anything like this since working on the student newspaper at college, and I have missed it.

This brings us, however, to the meat of the matter. My life has changed much over the last year. Indeed, the word I would choose to describe it would be interesting, often in terms of the Chinese Curse. Being stubborn and proud, I never did file for unemployment, and instead used up savings, retirement, and sales of property to keep going. The year has given me great pleasure, sorrow, and some time for some much needed thought.

The fact is, that I was not happy with my life and knew it needed some changes. One of the most critical, in my opinion, was the lack of a family. As much as I was traveling, it was difficult to meet anyone much less date. There are other changes that were needed as well, and I have identified several of these to implement as well.

Implementing the changes I desire is not going to be easy. I am now looking at a variety of employment options to both keep a roof over my head and to allow me to being the process of change. All change takes resources, and mine are critically low.

What this means for you is that this blog will see changes. I am a writer and I make my living off my words. My words here are free, and it has come down to a choice of writing for here for free or writing for clients who pay. So, I will probably reduce the amount of writing I do here. This may mean more links to good stories, it may mean days of no posts, I just am not sure yet. I will try to keep Food For Thought Saturday going, but I am going to try to start devoting my weekends to me. We will all just have to wait and see what pans out.

Meantime, I will do what I can within the constraints of trying to reshape my life into the path I desire. I have identified what I want to do and even a bit of how to get there. Anyone interested in serious investing into a venture or two, and who is willing to sign binding non-disclosure agreements and the like, drop me a line. If enough of you are willing to do a pledge drive and make contributions, my previous offer to blog full-time a la Andrew still stands. The price for that is $120,000.00, and I will do various things for less, including go to Iraq and blog from there for a month for $45,000.00. For $5.00 I will sing, and for $20.00 I will stop singing (Trust me, just pay the $20.00 up front, Ed.).

There will be posts, and there are many topics on which I would like to write. They will, for now, have to wait while I work on paying jobs and on finding the job(s) that will let me reach my goals.

Thank you all for your support, encouragement, and patience.

LW