Much, much later....

In keeping with the spirit of other blogger friends who have posted recently after a long break, I have decided to do the same.  My last blog post was so very dispirited and a teensy bit depressed, I was a little worried about following it up.  But enough time has passed and much has happened in the meantime.  Here is a summary of events since January 2011:

• Went back home to Mazatlan in January and stayed there until late April in a small apartment in old Centro at Villa Serena.  Mike continued to work on contract in California and miraculously was able to fly back and forth to Mazatlan most weekends (taking Friday and Monday as travel/work remotely days) AND have the client pay for the airfare.  This made everything sooo much better and he was being paid very well, so our financial situation improved too.
• Summer in Okotoks.  Mike worked in California until July and was then "between contracts" until Sept. 25.  This was both good and bad.  We did a lot of road-tripping around Alberta which was fun, but there was an interruption of income.  Luckily, we had saved well during his last gig and had paid down debts so it wasn't as bad as it could have been.
• Oct. 30 - yay! Back to Mazatlan via California.  Mike's "new" contract was same as the old contract - back to California with flights home on weekends.  One weekend we handed the keys to our house in Okotoks over to new tenants and drove with the dogs to California.  There I caught a flight with the dogs in cargo to Mazatlan to begin our winter stay in new digs - a gorgeous historic home in old Centro complete with courtyard and two extra studio "casitas".  We had found it before leaving Maz last spring and booked it for the winter.  More expensive than anything we had rented before, but with our house in Okotoks rented out to reliable tenants, our cost of living actually went down.
• December - Absolutely loving the house and life in Maz.  Mike's contract in California ended and he miraculously (again) found a new contract that allowed him to work full-time remotely from Mazatlan with period trips north to attend a meeting or two.  No interruption of income.
• April 2012 - Still here, Mike still working remotely, everyone thriving, parties in the courtyard, limited stress, new friends, dogs loving it and us loving having dogs with us.  Life has certainly improved 100% since my last post.  Mike and the dogs will be flying up to Okotoks on the 21st because the dogs can't fly in cargo later than May 1st.  But we still have the house here rented until the end of May, and our tenants in Okotoks want to stay there until the end of June.  So come the end of May, we will have to find alternative digs - it will be too hot here for us.  I'm thinking Canmore, Alberta for the month of June.  In the foothills of the Rocky Mountains close to Banff, Lake Louise, Jasper and other beautiful places.

Start-up Burn-out

Well, I now feel I can safely blog about it without feeling really, really bad. Or maybe I should say depressed, stressed, mad - you get the picture.  Somewhere around September and in the midst of the financial crisis at that time, I reached my burn-out point.  Just couldn't handle it anymore.  Something had to give.  I kept limping along though, thought the November break in Maz would fix me up, and then - another financial crisis.  And at Christmas.

The company Mike was contracting with in Sacramento was supposed to send the first deposit since he started working for them on Nov. 3 by bank transfer on Dec. 23.  Had it arrived on time, a lot of grief would have been avoided.  I would have been able to get presents for the guys at least.  But everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, and it continued until well past the first week of January.  I won't go into detail, but things got royally screwed up (again) and I reached my breaking point.  Anger was my primary emotion.  Frustration was my secondary emotion.  Not just with whoever screwed up our receivables, but EVERYONE and EVERYTHING, including myself and Mike.  I informed him in no uncertain terms that I was not going to do this anymore, and software development were words NOT to be used around me.  I was done.  Financial uncertainty was to end, debts were to be brought under control, and "rocky" would be a mild word to describe the marriage.

In very short order, I hired a company to take over all finances for both companies and personal, packed up the condo and hired a moving company to come and put it all in storage, got some good drugs and therapy (which I was already in since September), bought a ticket to Mazatlan and left the cold and snowy city of Calgary, and hopefully much of the stress, behind me.

Thanks to my wonderful therapist, Ella, I have a mantra now - "I am peacefully present".   I use it whenever I notice that my mind is in stress-mode, worry-mode, thinking about the past or the future, not even in the same place as my body - its off somewhere else, somewhere that can't possibly be as beautiful and wonderful as Mazatlan.  So I bring it back - often.  And I'm feeling much, much better.

Mike will be here soon, for short visits until he can get some extended time off.  He keeps the software fires burning; it's a dream he can't let go -  but I'm not participating in that.  It will or it won't succeed.  Maybe I'll get some of that fire back at some point - I don't know.  For now, I am peacefully present.