Urgh. I had not intended to go this long without any updates to the Wongery, especially the month after the long-anticipated "hard launch". I haven't been entirely neglecting the site; while I may not have posted anything, I've been (very slowly) puttering away on some articles, I've been reading through the rulebooks of the RPGs I want to initially support in the RPG Gamespace, and I've been continuing the Lua course on Udemy, with the intention of putting into practice what I learn creating some needed templates for the Wongery. But none of that has yet made it to the site, so I don't have anything apparent to show for it.

But the truth is, while I have been spending a little time lately on things related to the Wongery, I haven't been able to spend nearly as much as I'd like, because I've had a lot of other things to deal with. I mentioned in several recent posts that I'd been going through some financial difficulties lately, mostly related to some difficult circumstances in the industry I work in, but that while things were tough I wasn't seriously worried about not being able to make rent, or any like dire outcomes. Well... while the particular circumstance I was alluding to is now over, my job situation has not improved accordingly, and it doesn't help that, counting on things turning around, I'd taken on more debt that I now can't immediately pay. And I'm getting more worried. I still think I'll be able to squeak by; I don't think it'll get to the point that I'll miss a rent payment or be thirty days late on another obligation and get a lingering hit to my credit rating (not that I have any immediate plans that my credit rating will be important for anyway)... much less suffer worse consequences like eviction or repossession of my car. But I'm... much less sanguine than I was, and I already wasn't all that sanguine.

I don't want to say too much about my job, because I don't want to provide too much identifying information; I am still committed for no good reason whatsoever to keeping my real identity a secret. I suppose I'll reiterate the things I already have revealed, which include the facts that I work freelance and that my job takes me to different locations; I don't work in an office or in retail. I... don't hate my job; it's a reasonably interesting job, and if I had to have a job that didn't involve... creative work, this is probably as good a job as any for me to have. But I'd rather have a job that does involve creative work. I'd rather be making a living by making things. But that's not easy to achieve.

Well, right now my current job isn't paying the bills. I've already had to take on some side gigs for some extra money. So if there's a time to try to get into a different line of work, this is it.

My job should be paying the bills, really. It's a specialized job that requires a particular certification, and there aren't a lot of people who have it. Part of the problem is that since it's freelance work, getting jobs involves networking and drawing on connections, which I am not good at. I work with a manager who finds work for me, which most people in my line of work don't, but it saves me trying to find jobs myself. On the other hand, my manager lowballs pay rates, and of course takes a cut, so I'd be making significantly more money if I wasn't working with a manager and was just getting jobs on my own... assuming I could get jobs on my own, which I'm not confident I could do. Still, my manager hasn't been getting me enough work lately either, so something has to change.

(Okay, that's not fair; things have still been slow in the industry I work in, which still hasn't really fully recovered from some matters last year, and my manager actually is doing a very good job of getting me work, all things considered, and almost certainly is getting me much more work than I'd be able to find on my own. I'm kind of frustrated right now, but I shouldn't take that out on her.)

Honestly, while I do enjoy my job a lot more than I'm sure I would an office or retail job, it does have its downsides, one of which is a highly unpredictable schedule. I never know in advance which days I'm going to be working, or what hours—and the hours do vary widely, too; even on the days I do work it's not a nine-to-five job. One day I may work from seven a.m. to four, and the next from three p.m. to midnight. It's not uncommon for me to not find out until late at night what hours I'll be working the next day, or whether I'll be working the next day at all. This, of course, makes it difficult to make other plans; I can't, for instance, commit to a regular gaming group, if I don't know what days I'm going to be free. I can say I'm unavailable on particular days, but with work as scarce as it's been I can't afford to do that often; I need all the workdays I can get. So, anyway, there are reasons I'd kind of been wanting to find other work anyway, even aside from the desire to do more creative work; the current situation is just adding fuel to the fire.

So. Aside from... struggling to find ways to pay my bills, and working the aforementioned side gigs, one of the things I've been spending more time on lately that I therefore haven't been spending on the Wongery is trying to lay the groundwork for some possible ways to make an income with creative work. Of course, there is, in principle, the eventual possibility that I'll make an income through the Wongery itself, either through Patreon and/or Ko-fi or through licensing, or both. But if that ever happens, it won't be for a long time; there are other creative projects I have that have the potential to bring in some money sooner. None of them is a sure thing—I'm not sure any creative work is—but they're worth a try. Most of these are things I'd been planning on doing anyway, but the need for immediate income is accelerating those plans and making these projects a much higher priority.

(Even if one of these projects does work out and I do manage to get another source of income, I probably won't entirely give up my current job... but it'll free me up to be a lot more selective about the jobs I take, and to take a lot more days off so I can schedule other activities.)

I feel strongly about the Wongery. The Wongery is one of my top priorities. But I can't prioritize it over... being able to pay for things like rent and food and internet service. Without those things, I wouldn't be able to work on the Wongery anyway. I hope things will turn around soon, one way or another. I'll keep working on the Wongery regardless... but until things pick up, that work may be slow. Sorry.