Unemployment Week 1 Report

All's well so far! I've been taking the time to work on cleaning up my apartment and getting rid of old stuff that I don't need anymore, mostly. I've done the unemployment application and paperwork so that's all set. In the process of reducing expenditures by cutting out nonessential bills. Goodbye, land line long-distance service! Goodbye, housekeeper (that's a sad one). Once I'm finished watching last season of Battlestar Galactica, goodbye DVR and a big chunk of TV channels (I'm keeping the HD tier but losing the "variety" tier, which will unfortunately cost me the SciFi channel, boo).

I'm really glad I got all my debts paid off right before this happened. I literally made the last payment on the Camaro on the day I got laid off.

I've done some tweaks to the comic site in order to accomodate advertising. There's already a new banner ad setup at the top of the page, and I'll be adding an ad to the sidebar too. My webcomic friends have been recommending a few online ad networks that can provide actual income that would help me support and grow the comic, which would be great. I'm a bit conflicted about adding advertising, but I kinda have to try as many things as possible.

Meanwhile, I'm selling a bunch of stuff on eBay. Here's the list. Also, for some reason one item isn't showing up on that list, so here it is. There's videos and magazines and software, and there will be lots more. I'm trying to put at least 2 or 3 items up every day, with large batches going up on Sundays. If you see anything you like, or that you think a friend might like, I'd be honored if you'd put in a bid. :)

Tonight I will be at Wumpskate doing caricatures and sketch cards for the first time since early this year! It will be nice to be able to actually stay late, not worrying about having to get up for work tomorrow. That'll be a lot more relaxed and fun, I'll be able to take my time and do better work. If you're in Los Angeles, come on down and let me sketch you! Hope to see you there. :)

The Half-Expected, uh, Party?

It's a beautiful day here in Los Angeles, maybe a bit warm, but not too uncomfortable. It's sunny and the sky is clear and blue.

It's a nice way to start my first full day of unemployment. Yep, I've been downsized. Well, not exactly, it really wasn't a planned thing on the part of my company. Unfortunately, one of the two games we were working on got cancelled abruptly, and they haven't lined up any further work past the one that's still running, the just-announced Scratch: Ultimate DJ which will come out in the spring of 2009. Since most of the concept work for that one is done, with no new games ready to go there just isn't enough work (even with pitching new games) to keep on four concept artists, so Kevin and I were let go, along with about 10 others from various departments.

The company gave us some severance pay, and with that added to my accumulated vacation pay my final check is enough to hold me over for quite some time. Even with the new car payment, since I've paid off the Camaro and all but one of my credit cards, I don't have many bills that I can't cut right to the bone. The one card left doesn't have much left on it; I was going to pay it off this month because it would have been a 3-paycheck month, and I only budget myself for 2 paychecks a month (which is most months). Instead of paying it off I cut the payment back to $100 to preserve cash while still chopping down the balance.

With the severance and my savings, I'm not in any immediate financial danger. Unemployment will actually cover all of my most essential bills (rent, food, internet) and everything else can be reduced or eliminated. I suppose I'll miss the HD DVR, but once I'm done watching the last season of BSG from it (probably tonight!) I can lose it completely.

So if necessary, I can stretch for many months even if I don't see another penny of income - which simply isn't going to happen. I have skills and I have friends, so I'll get work of one kind or another soon enough.

Actually, for the past few weeks I've been working on cutting back my expenses anyway, in order to save more money for future things like the wedding and eventually a house, so I'm already in budgeting/cutback mode, which makes things much easier mentally and psychologically.

So, I'm unemployed. But believe it or not, I actually feel good about it. I honestly wasn't enjoying the work much lately at the company. I disagreed with some of the methods and processes in place there, and was frustrated a lot of the time at things which I perceived to be problems. I wasn't in any kind of a position to change any of these things or even express an opinion, so I just had to grit my teeth and deal with it.

Not to say that I was unhappy there all the time, the people I worked with are all good people who treat each other well and we had some fun, to be sure. But even so, I feel a lot lighter today. I wish it could have worked out better, and of course I wish everyone there the very best for the future.

I've been given the gift of time in exchange for a drastic reduction in income. Time is a rare gift to have handed to you, so I intend to make the most of it. With this gift of time, I have the opportunity to get a lot of things done that have been lying fallow, things like personal art, guitar playing, music recording, getting rid of stuff that I don't need, consolidating and storing the stuff that I do need but don't need laying around my place... even getting some exercise, working out. Having 11 hours a day handed back to me will let me do that for sure!

Anyway, so I've got some mixed feelings about it I suppose, but mostly I'm in a pretty good mood and I feel really positive about the whole thing. Certainly I'm not worried about "getting back on my feet," because I'm a long way from being knocked off them.

Bonus: all this free time means more Just A Bit Off comics! I should be able to do Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week, so come on back soon and check. If you like RSS feeds, you can click here and subscribe to the JABO feed, which shows the comic in your RSS/news reader. You'll always know when I update if you subscribe! If you haven't used RSS before, I recommend Google Reader!

If by any chance you'd like to help out financially, you could order a caricature or pick up something else from the Jeff Zugale Store. If you don't see anything you like in the store but have an idea for something you do like, please email me directly and I'll do my best!

It's all good, this is gonna be fun. It's still a beautiful day outside, and there's a lot of hours left to do stuff :)

On Vacation

Right, so starting right now I'm going AFK for a couple of weeks for my vacation. I'll be in Cabo somewhere, in a pool that has a bar in it, with no internet access and no computer. It remains to be seen whether I can survive under such circumstances, but I believe the proximity to the bar will help a bit.

The comic will update as usual!

I will miss my hunny very very much. :\

Have funs everyones...

Tidings and Felicitations

Well, yes it's been a while since I did any life-blogging. This is because I've been very very very busy with many many many things, and also because in general, life has been kind of going along in a steady fashion.

Of course, that means lots is happening. However, a lot of it I can't really talk about for a number of reasons, so those items will have to wait. Meanwhile, there's some important stuff that needs bloggin', so here goes.

First and definitely foremost on the list is that The Girlfriend is now officially The Fiancee. Yes, that's right, we're getting married. I know some of you already knew this but consider this the official announcement. We are engaged. We are betrothed. We are intended. We're getting married in September 2009.

Believe me, I'm as amazed as you are. I could probably gush on all day about how awesome she is, but that's more like what chick flicks are for, so for the sake of retaining some semblance of manliness (if I ever had such a thing) suffice it to say she is The Right One and being married to her will be the best thing ever in life so far.

The Parents seem to be pleased by this, which is good. The Father has less-than-begrudgingly given his permission, with only a small caveat - that I finish inking the comic in which he appears, which I left in rough pencils for some months. Now, that task, being but a simple one for a veteran of many Zelda games, is complete, and thus nothing now stands in the way of our future wedded bliss. For now, we'll ignore the approaching dissolution of Western Civilization; indeed we probably won't notice it happening, so lost in our little world of happy will we be.

There is the small matter of integrating the living arrangement of a little tiny dog with two much larger and somewhat cantankerous cats, but this is mere logistics, penny ante stuff in the matrix of life events.

Meanwhile, in other news, some major purchases past and future. A short time ago, The Fiancee took the MSF RiderCourse, got her M1 Motorcycle License (which qualifies her to ride even big ol' Harleys, or my Honda even), and bought herself a fine little scooter. (It's the green one.) She is, of course, having a wonderful time with it, and it also gets well over 100 miles to the gallon. Since her new teaching job - did I mention she's switching to a different school? - is a bit less than 2 miles from home, her fuel bill is going to be payable from my spare change. I'll be amazed if she has to fill it up more than once every 2 months.

Unfortunately, her car is not doing as well. It's getting pretty long in the tooth - a '92 Civic 4-door with over 265,000 miles - and is starting to feel its age. It has been a completely reliable car up until now, but we can see this will be coming to an end soon. So, we're in the market for a car. It will most likely be a 3- to 5-year-old Honda sedan; you simply can't go wrong with a Honda car. They are extremely well-built and long-lasting. I will be bringing my considerable post-Edmunds.com employment resources to bear, so dealers, this is fair warning: I am ready for you.

Also, as shown in this week's comic, it's time to replace my couch. This is actually a bigger deal to me than the car, even though it won't cost anywhere near as much. The problem is that this couch was the biggest pain in the ass to move into this apartment - it was nearly impossible and required disassembling part of my building's hallway - and that means that it's going to be at least as difficult to move it back out. Not to mention moving a new one in. Also, my budget isn't really good for buying a new couch right now, so most likely it's going to have to be something from IKEA or Living Spaces. Well, nothing for it but to grit my teeth and head up to Burbank to try out some fine Swedish cushionery. Sigh.

Um, what else? I don't get to play video games much, but Boom Blox is pretty awesome, so if you have a Wii you should buy it. We had dinner out last week with friends at the Tam O'Shanter restaurant, which was most excellent.

I finished the Environment art class that I was taking. Here's the class blog, some of my stuff is posted in it. Sadly I was not able to complete the homework by the end of the term, but of course the class isn't graded. I will finish it over the next couple of weeks. The reason I wasn't able to finish was actually a good one: I got some freelance work doing concepts for a television show pilot! It's still in development so I can't talk about it until January 2009, but I think it's a pretty cool show and it's right up my alley. I hope the show gets picked up for a series and that I can do more work on it.

I think that's about it, really. I guess that's plenty for now! I will do this more often, though.

A New Pinnacle of Nerd-dom

OK, I know this isn't going to be a big deal to anyone, but it's something of an achievement for me, something of a milestone really, so I'm writing about it.

This morning, for the first time EVER in more than 20 years of playing the game, I finally, finally, FINALLY managed to get 200 lines and reach level 20 playing Tetris, in the DS version, thus actually finishing the game and seeing the end screen.



Yes, I know, millions of you did this way back in '86, and millions of kids can do it easily today, but for me, this is some sweet satisfaction. Also that's my highest Tetris score ever.

An excellent start to my day.

All right, all right, I know, I'm a total geek. You knew that already. OK, go back to what you were doing and let me enjoy my little moment... ;)