It has, once again, been a month since my last post here, and once again I am not happy about that, and once again I writing a blog post about it.

I have, again, not been entirely neglecting the Wongery. There are a number of articles I've been working on, though I haven't posted any of them because rather than focus on one article until it's ready to go I have been working on many posts in parallel, because I am an idiot. But I haven't been able to put nearly as much time into the Wongery as I've wanted to, and the main reason is because of work, or the lack thereof.

I haven't said what I do for a living, and that of course is intentional, since I don't want to give too much information that would make it easy to guess my real identity (which I have no particularly good reason for keeping a secret, but I do a lot of things I have no particularly good reason to do). I have mentioned in a previous post that I don't work an office or retail job; one thing I haven't explicitly mentioned (though I guess it could be reasonably inferred from that post and maybe a few other details I've dropped here and there) is that my job is a freelance one. I do work what amounts to a full time job (usually), but rather than working consistently for one employer, I do many short-term jobs for many different employers. This does have its advantages; as stated in the aforementioned previous post, I do have an interesting job with a lot of variety. But it has disadvantages too. For one thing, if things are slow in the industry, I don't have a guarantee of a steady paycheck. (On the other hand, I also don't have to worry about being laid off and having to look for a new position; once things pick up again I can get right back to work without the hassle of a job hunt.)

Well, right now things are very slow in the industry. And have been for the last few months. I haven't been unemployed, but I've been kind of underemployed; I have still been getting work, but I've been getting significantly less work than usual.

(Does my use of the phrase "the industry" give away what industry I work in? I mean, when I hear "the industry", there's one specific industry I think of, and it's, well, that one. But I'm guessing that's because that's the industry I work in; I suppose it's likely that people working in just about any industry refer to the specific industry that they work in as "the industry". Or maybe not; I don't know.)

Now, superficially it might seem that less time spent working should mean I'd have more time to work on the Wongery. But in practice, it doesn't work that way. Because less work means less money, and less money means more stress. While I haven't spent as much time working, I have spent more time trying to juggle my finances to keep afloat, looking for side gigs to help pay the bills, and so forth. And besides, it's hard to focus on creative pursuits when I have to worry about how I'm going to come up with rent next month. Things have been tough; I took out a title loan on my car a few months back, and at the time I'm writing this, all my credit cards are over their limits and the total balance in my bank accounts is hundreds of dollars in the red (though that'll be remedied as soon as I receive some paychecks I'm waiting on).

(You might wonder, if this has been going on for a few months, how I could have afforded to go to Gen Con in August, as I said I did in the post linked above. And the answer is, I absolutely couldn't. Yes, I was already in financial difficulty at the time, and going to Gen Con strained my already badly strained finances to and perhaps past their limits. Honestly, I was kind of counting on things in the industry picking up in the very near future, and, well, they didn't; if I hadn't splurged on Gen Con I probably wouldn't be in quite such bad financial shape as I am right now. Still, I can't honestly say I regret having gone, even though I probably should.)

This state is temporary. There is a reason why things are so slow right now in the industry I work in, and that reason is one that will not persist indefinitely. (This week has in fact been a lucrative one workwise—I'm working right now and writing this post while on the job—though it'll be a few weeks before I receive the checks in the mail and reap the fruits of the week's work.) Still, there's no predicting exactly when the current circumstances will be over (as remunerative as this week has been, it is unfortunately more likely to be a temporary anomaly than a herald of things having fully turned around), so until they are I can't rest easy.

So, again, by the projected hard launch of the Wongery on January 1, it is not going to be in nearly the state I hoped it would be in. It won't be easy, especially since I still need to complete those Udemy courses on Javascript and PHP before I can do it, but I think by then I can implement some of the key features I plan to by then, like most of the additional namespaces. (But not, alas, the Atlasspace, which was going to include interactive maps that would allow the user to zoom in and out, turn different features and layers on and off, and follow links to other adjoining or related maps. That's going to involve some more detailed programming that I definitely won't be able to get to before January. It'll still be on my to-do list for an eventual future feature, though.) But even if I manage to put in a lot of crunch time in November and December, the Wongery still won't have nearly the number of articles I wanted it to have at launch. Maybe with a lot of work I can get it to five hundred, but I had aspired to have a thousand articles at launch as a bare minimum, and that's certainly not going to happen.

(It's tempting here to drop the famous Robert Burns quote, "the best laid schemes o' mice and men gang aft a-gley", but let's face it, none o' my schemes were ever that weil laid in the first place.)

I'd originally planned to have the hard launch last December, but deferred it to next January because it was clear it wasn't going to be nearly where I'd hoped it would be. So if it's still not going to be nearly where I'd hoped it would be, are we going to defer it again? No. No; I had really wanted to have a lot more content before the hard launch; but it would be far too easy to just keep making further excuses to defer it again and again and never actually get around to the launch at all. No; we'll have the launch in January, and if the Wongery isn't what I'd hoped it would be by then, well, we'll call it a proof of concept, maybe, but we'll have the hard launch regardless. I'm not happy about not having made more progress with the Wongery, but we'll launch with whatever we've got.

(I am also upset with myself because I had a map of the world of Curcalen where I had named all the continents and some other significant locales, and I seem to have misplaced it somehow. I've been searching for it, but with no success; I'm worried I may have thrown it away by mistake, but even if I didn't, I have no idea where it could have gone. Even among the plethoric panoply of papers in my possession, it should stand out to some degree because it's on bright pink paper (that wasn't intentional, but the reasons aren't worth going into here), but I still haven't been able to find it. If I never find the paper, it's not an utter disaster; I don't remember the names of the continents, but I can certainly come up with new names for them; but I'd rather use the names I already gave them if I can find that paper. Anyway, though, while annoying, this isn't really a big contributor to my unproductivity.)

However, my financial tribulations have repercussions beyond my failure to produce as much content for the Wongery as I'd have liked. I described in my last post my plans for how I was going to publicize the Wongery for its hard launch... and some of those plans required a significant outlay of money. Money which, as discussed in detail above, I don't have. Paying artists for illustrations; paying writers for a fiction anthology; prize money for the winners of a game jam... all of that combined would cost thousands of dollars. I don't have thousands of dollars. In a sense I don't technically even have zero dollars. As mentioned before, the available credit on my credit cards and the total balance in my bank accounts are both negative. Plus, there are other matters I'd like to have in order before the hard launch that are also going to cost money. I'd like to pay a lawyer to properly draft the Static License (or whatever I end up calling it). I'd like to register the Wongery as a private limited company. I'd also like to get a separate, dedicated hosting plan for the Wongery rather than continue to have it hosted, as it is now, on the same hosting plan as my other websites, if only to prevent people from figuring out my identity by comparing the sites' IP addresses. (Admittedly, this is very likely an unnecessary precaution, given that (a) it's unlikely that anyone will care enough about my identity to go to that much trouble to try to figure it out, and (b) even if they do it's exceedinly unlikely they'd think to compare it to my other obscure and unvisited websites.) All of these things will also involve nontrivial expenditures.

So, if I don't have any money, what I am going to do? Am I just going to... not do these things? Go ahead and launch the Wongery without the Static License in place and without the liability protection of the private limited company? (And still hosted on the same plan as my other websites?) Publicize the site without the anthology and the game jam, and not solicit art at the time of the hard launch?

Well... I guess if there's absolutely no way for me to afford these things, then I won't have a choice, but I don't think that's going to be the case. I think there are options. Not necessarily good options, but better options than just... not doing those things. I do think things in the industry are likely to turn around soon and I'll be back to working full time again, though admittedly I've been thinking things would turn around soon for a while and it hasn't happened yet. Anyway, once the industry's back to normal, I'll be in much better financial shape. Even then, I probably won't be in thousands-of-dollars-to-spare financial shape very soon, but at least it'll help a lot.

But if that doesn't happen, or if that's not enough? Well, then if I have to I can take out a loan. Would I be able to get a loan, given my financial status? Well, despite everything, I have strong reason to believe the answer is yes. (My current credit rating isn't great, but it's not nearly as abysmal as my relation of my financial woes may lead one to believe; I may be over my credit limit on all my cards right now, but I haven't actually missed any payments. The biggest negative influence on my credit rating is simply my high balance on my credit cards... and that's something that can be quickly reversed once I have enough money to pay them down.) Is it a good idea to borrow thousands of dollars and spend them on the Wongery, something that has a very questionable prospect of providing immediate or indeed eventual reimbursement? Almost certainly not, but it definitely wouldn't be the first bad idea I've followed through on. The Wongery is only one of many (way, way too many) projects I've got in progress, but out of all my many (way, way too many) projects, it's the one that's most important to me, and in which I'm most invested in the success. I'm willing to make significant sacrifices to try to make the Wongery a thing, up to and including seriously jeopardizing my future financial well-being (more so than it's already in jeopardy, I mean).

If I do end up taking out a loan to finance the Wongery, though, I'll almost definitely be setting up a Patreon for the Wongery soon after or simultaneously with the hard launch. That's something I'd been considering doing anyway, but if I'm actually incurring debt because of the Wongery that will make it all the more urgent that I make an effort to make some money with it and try to get it paying for itself. Will that work? Probably not; I don't know what the chances are that we'll ever get any patrons, and the chances are nontrivial that I'll just be precipitating a pathetic slide into destitution. But, eh, it's worth a try.

If all else fails, as a last resort, I guess it's not off the table to make some money participating in paid clinical trials. I'm not proud to admit it, but that's something I've done in the past (years in the past, before I had my current job). I don't want to do that again, but... it is technically an option. I really don't think it'll come to that, though.

Anyway. Things have been tough; it's been hard to get anything done on the Wongery lately; and it's not looking like the Wongery will be nearly at the level I'd hoped for it to be at the time of the hard launch. But the hard launch will take place on schedule regardless. One way or another, I'm going to make it happen.

Yes, I realize that despite the title this post had nothing to do with Oxfordshire Day. I'm sorry. I really didn't know what to title the post. Still, happy Oxfordshire Day to those who celebrate it, which I'm guessing is probably pretty much nobody outside Oxfordshire, and maybe not many people in Oxfordshire, either. Tomorrow is International Sloth Day, though, so be sure to be ready for that one.

[Once I get images working in these blog posts I'll insert an image of a sloth here.]