BOOJIE SENTENCE ALERT

I'm thankful for my banker.

How fucked up is that? Thing of it is, he's the Iron Bank of Bravos. He's the Rothschilds. He's not in it for me, he's in it for him... but when you've taken out a six-figure loan for a business, you're not dealing with tellers anymore. You're dealing with a dude who reads your profit & loss statements every month, who has to approve your capital expenditures, who will bloody well polish and modify your business plan because he's got capital hanging out there in the breeze and you're a part of his personal portfolio. You underperform, he underperforms.

I've talked to him before because the birth center's landlord has threatened to sell us the building when his kids are out of school (he's not a great landlord, he knows it, and I think he wants to cash out when the kids are out so he can go travel the world or some shit). The building is currently worth about $1.9m which is a large expense. I mean, I'm collecting unemployment. new tires pushed the checking account down to $21. Cash flow is pretty fucked up when one of you is a freelancer and the other has had doors open on a small business for less than 9 months. But give us four years and, based on projections and a refined understanding of commercial loan structures (synopsis: they're deeply fucked up) we'll probably be able to do it.

I talked to him again because I'm lining up on a future where I'm not mixing bullshit television for a living, I'm making watches. This will involve school. This will involve investment. And if I do it the way I want to do it, it will involve the substantial purchase of machine tools. I asked my representative what sort of credentialing and behavior the Iron Bank of Bravos would like to see before underwriting this venture. His answer was, essentially, "fuck your watchmaking business, buddy, you run off and bail on a steady income before you've secured a loan on your wife's building and you have no loan. Get your shit together first and then run off and join the circus. Here, let's talk about how we can line that up."

Granted - by my calcs the Iron Bank is likely to make a little better than a million dollars on this proposed transaction. I'd give pretty detailed advice, too, if I were trying to protect a potential seven-figure revenue stream. There is no altruism here, just pure business sense. Nonetheless it's so easy to hear "go to school! Learn a trade! Scholarship! SBA loan! Ponies and rainbows!" especially from the people trying to get you on the hook that being slapped upside the head by a Lawful Neutral Dirty Rotten Banker was a breath of fresh air. It definitely altered my flight plan... but it shifted it from a path of easy hypotheticals to a path of hard actuals and I would much rather know than guess.

It's extraordinarily fucking weird bandying about millions of dollars as if you actually have them while at the same time recognizing that you're bandying them about because they're within reach. I haven't had a real job in over ten years now and I've got a house, I've got a car, I've got a daughter and I've got a fairly clear future and everything I've ever learned, everything I've ever been taught, everyone I've ever talked to would not believe I'm not dead in a gutter right now. I feel like a goddamn pirate sometimes.

My father told me to liquidate my ethereum holdings NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW before I "lose everything." ETH was at $6 and I had nothing to lose.

My daughter begs me to take the top down in the Porsche because she likes waving at people from the back of a convertible in December. She'll say things like "but it's not raining that much..."

I may become horrifically risk-averse again. Tragedy may yet strike. I have plenty to lose. But I'm starting to come around to the fact that I didn't fluke into my life, I achieved it by being brave enough to bet on myself. It's a weird fucking feeling.