Apparently the pictures I took on our trip in mid-July have sparked some interest from photography buffs. The comments left on my wife's blog where she posted a handful of the shots have generated quite a bit of buzz, and when I posted the entire set on Facebook, I received even more oohs and aahs over the pictures.
Photography. It's something I've never even considered in my life. But I have to admit, I was shocked when I saw the pictures when we got home, astounded by their beauty, and I have been further shocked by the few comments we've received in regards to the pictures, as well as the fact that it seems to have sparked interest in at least a few members of the professional photography community.
I may actually start looking into doing this on a semi-professional level. Why?
Bulgaria, and this area of Europe in particular, is a hidden gem when it comes to natural wonders of the world, as well as ancient structures from the Byzantine and Roman empires. My wife and I are in a financially free situation that allows us to travel several times a year, and we have been making a point to visit some of the most geographically beautiful locations within Bulgaria, Turkey, Greece, Italy, and otherwise.
One of the people who followed us recently, in particular, has something mentioned on his blog that I had never in my life thought about before. His name is Stephen Baird and his comment was this: "I really believe that anyone can be a great photographer with ANY kind of camera."
I had never even contemplated it, but after seeing how good our recent shots came out, and feeling inspired by such comments as his, as well as knowing that we are going to be setting out to see some of the most amazing natural wonders of the world in coming months (like our trip to Seven Rila Lakes this weekend...leaving at around 5 this afternoon), I'm wondering if perhaps I might want to look into investing in a more professional camera and seeing about doing some freelance photography along with my freelance journalism and freelance writing.
In any case, just so the camera buffs who are following us can boggle (or not!), those shots were taken on an Olympus X-820, which my wife and I bought a few months back. Nothing fancy, just a nice, new digital camera for us to use in our casual sessions shooting pics of her crafting goods, around Sofia, on our walks, and otherwise. But even I, an unprofessional by any use of the word when it comes to photography, was shocked at how well those recent pictures came out. I don't even know the ins and outs of working that camera fully, and those pictures were awe-inspiring.
In any case, I'd like to thank the few photographers who have made comments and are now following along, as you guys have inspired me to start looking into (potentially) a new side-line for creative output.
Friday, July 31, 2009
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Seven Rila Lakes trip
We'll be out of town for the third weekend in a row...with yet another getaway up to the mountains!
First weekend was Milanova, the small village where Evy's grandmother (on her dad's side) had a home, which is now grossly overgrown as no one has done anything with it for 13 years. She has some pics up of our hiking trip on her blog, and I just uploaded the entire batch to Facebook this morning.
Last weekend was a nice picnic trip up with the family to celebrate her aunt being here from Seattle for a month.
This weekend we are going up for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to the Seven Rila Lakes. We are going with her family for a relaxing weekend getaway to one of the many beautiful spots within Bulgaria to enjoy some hiking, great food, great climate, fresh air, and plenty of hiking trails. Should be an absolute blast.
Enjoy the pictures! I'm in amazement, and can't wait to head out on Friday afternoon! We should have a new round of pictures available for people next week!
First weekend was Milanova, the small village where Evy's grandmother (on her dad's side) had a home, which is now grossly overgrown as no one has done anything with it for 13 years. She has some pics up of our hiking trip on her blog, and I just uploaded the entire batch to Facebook this morning.
Last weekend was a nice picnic trip up with the family to celebrate her aunt being here from Seattle for a month.
This weekend we are going up for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday to the Seven Rila Lakes. We are going with her family for a relaxing weekend getaway to one of the many beautiful spots within Bulgaria to enjoy some hiking, great food, great climate, fresh air, and plenty of hiking trails. Should be an absolute blast.
Enjoy the pictures! I'm in amazement, and can't wait to head out on Friday afternoon! We should have a new round of pictures available for people next week!
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
What did I do before I became a writer?
I don't talk about it much on this blog, but I figured I'd give people a chance to see some of what I did. I don't, sadly, have a portfolio anymore because I retired from the industry, but I do keep an updated resume which includes all of my previous jobs plus contact points for reference for individuals who want to know.
Basically, I was a third generation ceramic tile and natural stone contractor. I was on job-sites from the time I was 5 years old. My grandfather started out around 50 years ago, and three of his four sons went into the industry as well. My dad and his two other brothers have collectively done between them over 750 million dollars of work, nation-wide, with my dad running the more "commercial" branch of the family businesses. Both of his brothers have had extremely successful years as well, each with their own unique brand of success.
By the time I was 19 years old I was a supervisor for a multi-million dollar company owned by my father. I was overseeing multi-million dollar projects and running crews of up to 20-25 employees at a time. However, commercial work wasn't all we did. Some of the projects my dad worked on over the years included some extremely high profile projects for such individuals as Wayne Newton, Johnny Cash, and (forgetting the name) the CEO of the Denver branch of the Oppenheimer corp. I worked on many of these projects growing up.
By the time I was 22 years old I was starting to branch off on my own, but I had to take an 18 month hiatus for health reasons. When I came back to the industry in 2004 I went straight into forming my own company, which had a specific focus on high-end residential projects, with some remodels thrown in to generate some extra income from time to time when necessary. Two of the highest profile projects I worked on over the years were up in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Namely, The Porches and Marabou Ranch.
I was not the contract holder on those projects (I worked specifically for John Porter of Classic Tile and Stone, who eventually partnered up with my dad's company, Artisan Tile and Stone), and I did a great many projects in between, including several high-end condos, as well as my spec home and remodel projects down on the Front Range in Denver, Ft. Collins, Greeley, and otherwise, but those two projects in particular I spent a great deal of time on. The Porches project I spent nearly three years working exclusively on, and one of the last projects I did before my wife and I moved to Europe was working through the two partnered companies listed above on the Marabou Ranch project for about 6 months on the owner cabins. I did not personally work on the other buildings listed, but Artisan Tile and Classic Tile picked up the contract after the previous company had proven unable to hold up their end of the deal. There was another installer on-site about 4 months prior to my own work on it, doing work on the other buildings.
The last home we did at The Porches featured an individual who purchased both sides of the duplex and ripped out the dividing wall between them. We spent almost 6 months in that home. Every single bit of it featured exotic natural stone from all parts of the world. The stairwell down into the basement featured coral reef slab from off the coast of Australia, with the skeletons of fish inside the stone all "swimming" down the walls along the stairway. The guest master upstairs featured this copper slate that took me nearly three weeks to install, floor, walls, and ceiling. The daughter's bathroom was a cream marble, floors, walls, and ceilings. The master bathroom itself took me and two other installers around 2 months to complete, and was this deep, green marble imported from India that went up into a vaulted ceiling above, and the entire thing was set on a diagonal pattern with 12x12 marble, with all of the interior and exterior corners having a 3 inch black marble strip.
It actually got me thinking the other day that I need to e-mail the guy I used to work for, John Porter, and have him e-mail me some of the portfolio pictures, because I know he keeps a detailed record of all the things we worked on. I did as well, but I didn't bring it with us, thinking I had retired from the industry. But I find myself debating starting a company here to do 2-3 spec home projects a year, and I might want to look into getting all my portfolios set up again. The main issue is that my portfolios were not digital...which is why I just left them behind. Not to mention, I didn't take as many pictures as I could have over the years, because I was always in a situation where I could point to my family's name, reference a list of jobs I had worked on, and didn't have to worry about pictures.
My dad actually told me that pictures do more harm than good, because anyone can claim a picture as their own. He also claimed that a "true" master craftsman doesn't need pictures to back up his work...he lets his bank account and his reputation do the talking for him. And while I somewhat agree, I've found in recent years that digital media is the world, and has been for the last decade or so, and it really does help if you can give people pictures IF you can prove that you were in fact the person working on that particular project. That's the beauty of having a detailed resume attached to your portfolio...people can clearly see the pictures linked to the jobs, and they can make relevant phone calls to verify your information.
I love writing, and I absolutely want to transition to full-time novel writing in the next couple of years, but I'm also in a unique position in the sense that Evy and I aren't locked in to only working on ONE project at a time, so we have a lot of different things we are trying out, and I'm thinking I may want to see about setting up a high-end, custom-home company next year just to do 2-3 spec homes or high-end homes for this part of Europe. There are a *lot* of Westerners coming here and buying homes, and let's just say the Bulgarian way of construction leaves a little lacking, and many people I've talked to wished they could find Western-style craftsmanship in this part of the world. It might be a niche market I could make an extra 30-40k a year out of. Have to wait and see.
Basically, I was a third generation ceramic tile and natural stone contractor. I was on job-sites from the time I was 5 years old. My grandfather started out around 50 years ago, and three of his four sons went into the industry as well. My dad and his two other brothers have collectively done between them over 750 million dollars of work, nation-wide, with my dad running the more "commercial" branch of the family businesses. Both of his brothers have had extremely successful years as well, each with their own unique brand of success.
By the time I was 19 years old I was a supervisor for a multi-million dollar company owned by my father. I was overseeing multi-million dollar projects and running crews of up to 20-25 employees at a time. However, commercial work wasn't all we did. Some of the projects my dad worked on over the years included some extremely high profile projects for such individuals as Wayne Newton, Johnny Cash, and (forgetting the name) the CEO of the Denver branch of the Oppenheimer corp. I worked on many of these projects growing up.
By the time I was 22 years old I was starting to branch off on my own, but I had to take an 18 month hiatus for health reasons. When I came back to the industry in 2004 I went straight into forming my own company, which had a specific focus on high-end residential projects, with some remodels thrown in to generate some extra income from time to time when necessary. Two of the highest profile projects I worked on over the years were up in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. Namely, The Porches and Marabou Ranch.
I was not the contract holder on those projects (I worked specifically for John Porter of Classic Tile and Stone, who eventually partnered up with my dad's company, Artisan Tile and Stone), and I did a great many projects in between, including several high-end condos, as well as my spec home and remodel projects down on the Front Range in Denver, Ft. Collins, Greeley, and otherwise, but those two projects in particular I spent a great deal of time on. The Porches project I spent nearly three years working exclusively on, and one of the last projects I did before my wife and I moved to Europe was working through the two partnered companies listed above on the Marabou Ranch project for about 6 months on the owner cabins. I did not personally work on the other buildings listed, but Artisan Tile and Classic Tile picked up the contract after the previous company had proven unable to hold up their end of the deal. There was another installer on-site about 4 months prior to my own work on it, doing work on the other buildings.
The last home we did at The Porches featured an individual who purchased both sides of the duplex and ripped out the dividing wall between them. We spent almost 6 months in that home. Every single bit of it featured exotic natural stone from all parts of the world. The stairwell down into the basement featured coral reef slab from off the coast of Australia, with the skeletons of fish inside the stone all "swimming" down the walls along the stairway. The guest master upstairs featured this copper slate that took me nearly three weeks to install, floor, walls, and ceiling. The daughter's bathroom was a cream marble, floors, walls, and ceilings. The master bathroom itself took me and two other installers around 2 months to complete, and was this deep, green marble imported from India that went up into a vaulted ceiling above, and the entire thing was set on a diagonal pattern with 12x12 marble, with all of the interior and exterior corners having a 3 inch black marble strip.
It actually got me thinking the other day that I need to e-mail the guy I used to work for, John Porter, and have him e-mail me some of the portfolio pictures, because I know he keeps a detailed record of all the things we worked on. I did as well, but I didn't bring it with us, thinking I had retired from the industry. But I find myself debating starting a company here to do 2-3 spec home projects a year, and I might want to look into getting all my portfolios set up again. The main issue is that my portfolios were not digital...which is why I just left them behind. Not to mention, I didn't take as many pictures as I could have over the years, because I was always in a situation where I could point to my family's name, reference a list of jobs I had worked on, and didn't have to worry about pictures.
My dad actually told me that pictures do more harm than good, because anyone can claim a picture as their own. He also claimed that a "true" master craftsman doesn't need pictures to back up his work...he lets his bank account and his reputation do the talking for him. And while I somewhat agree, I've found in recent years that digital media is the world, and has been for the last decade or so, and it really does help if you can give people pictures IF you can prove that you were in fact the person working on that particular project. That's the beauty of having a detailed resume attached to your portfolio...people can clearly see the pictures linked to the jobs, and they can make relevant phone calls to verify your information.
I love writing, and I absolutely want to transition to full-time novel writing in the next couple of years, but I'm also in a unique position in the sense that Evy and I aren't locked in to only working on ONE project at a time, so we have a lot of different things we are trying out, and I'm thinking I may want to see about setting up a high-end, custom-home company next year just to do 2-3 spec homes or high-end homes for this part of Europe. There are a *lot* of Westerners coming here and buying homes, and let's just say the Bulgarian way of construction leaves a little lacking, and many people I've talked to wished they could find Western-style craftsmanship in this part of the world. It might be a niche market I could make an extra 30-40k a year out of. Have to wait and see.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Websites and ideas
I've talked about it before, and I think it's time to actually get around to doing one. A blog is nice, but it's not the same level of professionalism that a website brings to your business. Not to mention as I diversify I need a place that more clearly showcases the different aspects of what I offer clients, whereas the blog is a mixture of professional and personal posts. I need to make the distinction between the two, and to that end, I'm looking ahead to creating a website.
I'm not going to worry about it for the month of August, but I think I'll take a look in September and see about either hiring someone to build me one, or doing it myself. Nothing fancy, just a few pages to showcase a clients list, my resume, contact list, and services offered. I've firmly established myself as a content writer over the last 18 months, and I'm beginning to rack up some serious credentials as a journalist, and on top of that I'm racking up experience as a gaming journalist, not to mention I've served as a writer on a RPG which is finally releasing in August, where I get to claim 6 months of writing and editing experience. On top of that I've also been actively helping other writers get established in the field, with my list topping a dozen writers now since the first of the year. Nothing against you guys personally, but it's time for me to start charging for consultations, because that's just another aspect of business.
I've also debated two other business ideas. One is starting a freelance writing community site. The other is to start a short-story critiquing site for burgeoning writers who are looking to get started in the industry, but don't want to have to wait 2-3 months on critiques like other organizations do, such as Critters. On the record, I love Critters, and I think they do a great service to the industry, but they have gotten so large now that it takes literally 3 months (or around there) to hear any feedback on your stories, and when you add to that the 2-3 months most magazines take to get back to you on a story, you are looking at 6 months of downtime before you realistically know how your story is doing. That's unacceptable for working people who are trying to realistically get established in the field.
I've also debated about starting a fantasy and science fiction e-zine for the English speaking European market. I have to look into this with a little more detail over the coming months, and it's absolutely not something I will be doing this year, but I'm looking at actively pursuing this because there aren't a lot of high-quality fantasy and science fiction 'zines on the European front. I would also be funding this venture out of my pocket, and as with any business venture you want to research the industry as much as possible before you invest any money. Still, it's an idea that's brewing.
So....these are all business ventures which are on top of the other irons I already have on the fire. As you can see, I keep myself pretty busy outside of freelance writing and working on fiction :) In any case, the first step towards any of these is getting the website going sometime in September, at which point I'll be making this blog my "personal" blog, and using the other blog as my professional blog, in conjunction with the website itself. Part of my research for the month of August is seeing if I can find someone willing to do the work for a relatively inexpensive rate, as well as researching a few more sites to find what I feel is a good design for me, or determining if I want to do the work myself. It's not that I can't...it's just that I'd rather pay someone else to do it if they are affordable, and focus my efforts on other areas.
That's the mid-day update :) Time to get back to writing.
I'm not going to worry about it for the month of August, but I think I'll take a look in September and see about either hiring someone to build me one, or doing it myself. Nothing fancy, just a few pages to showcase a clients list, my resume, contact list, and services offered. I've firmly established myself as a content writer over the last 18 months, and I'm beginning to rack up some serious credentials as a journalist, and on top of that I'm racking up experience as a gaming journalist, not to mention I've served as a writer on a RPG which is finally releasing in August, where I get to claim 6 months of writing and editing experience. On top of that I've also been actively helping other writers get established in the field, with my list topping a dozen writers now since the first of the year. Nothing against you guys personally, but it's time for me to start charging for consultations, because that's just another aspect of business.
I've also debated two other business ideas. One is starting a freelance writing community site. The other is to start a short-story critiquing site for burgeoning writers who are looking to get started in the industry, but don't want to have to wait 2-3 months on critiques like other organizations do, such as Critters. On the record, I love Critters, and I think they do a great service to the industry, but they have gotten so large now that it takes literally 3 months (or around there) to hear any feedback on your stories, and when you add to that the 2-3 months most magazines take to get back to you on a story, you are looking at 6 months of downtime before you realistically know how your story is doing. That's unacceptable for working people who are trying to realistically get established in the field.
I've also debated about starting a fantasy and science fiction e-zine for the English speaking European market. I have to look into this with a little more detail over the coming months, and it's absolutely not something I will be doing this year, but I'm looking at actively pursuing this because there aren't a lot of high-quality fantasy and science fiction 'zines on the European front. I would also be funding this venture out of my pocket, and as with any business venture you want to research the industry as much as possible before you invest any money. Still, it's an idea that's brewing.
So....these are all business ventures which are on top of the other irons I already have on the fire. As you can see, I keep myself pretty busy outside of freelance writing and working on fiction :) In any case, the first step towards any of these is getting the website going sometime in September, at which point I'll be making this blog my "personal" blog, and using the other blog as my professional blog, in conjunction with the website itself. Part of my research for the month of August is seeing if I can find someone willing to do the work for a relatively inexpensive rate, as well as researching a few more sites to find what I feel is a good design for me, or determining if I want to do the work myself. It's not that I can't...it's just that I'd rather pay someone else to do it if they are affordable, and focus my efforts on other areas.
That's the mid-day update :) Time to get back to writing.
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Slowly but surely
We *finally* had the time to get crafting supplies.
It's largely her project, with me simply providing some consulting and doing some helping when I can. Largely I'm just her go-to person when she asks "what do you think about this idea?". Everything she's coming up with is absolutely her creations, and there are some really, really cool ideas. Also, like I said in another blog post, she's going to be taking a pottery course starting in September and gearing up to do ceramics as part of her shop as well.
We stayed up till nearly 4 a.m. Friday night discussing her quitting her part-time job. There are a lot of issues behind it, and she's not entirely sure if she will or not, but she will have a final decision on it by the end of August. Basically what it comes down to is the fact that she's working at a clinic here, and they pay Bulgarian wages. Which is essentially the same as Mexican wages. She works 40 hour weeks for a baseline salary of around 300 USD a month. She gets a 30% commission on procedures, so if she gets clients, that edges up to around 500-600 USD a month. She is the lowest person on the totem pole there. The doctors, and the girls who have been working there for several years, make comparable wages to most American and European workers...40k USD a year, roughly. However, Evy is nowhere near that level of expertise, and she is forced into working for what is considered the "average" Bulgarian wage....400-500 leva a month, or 300-400 USD a month.
This is why she is so keen to do "something else" while she's finishing up school. Now, the blessing with her job is that it's so relaxed that she can literally take a week off of work...whenever she wants. One of the girls just came back from 8 months of maternity leave. In America you would have been replaced for taking maternity leave that long.
It's not that she hates her job. She actually likes it, most days. It's the pay that is the issue. I'm sitting at home working a fraction of the hours she works and I'm pulling in significantly more than that. I basically make 25-30 dollars an hour at present with all my clients combined together, and I work 4-5 hours a day, so I'm doing about 2200-2500 a month. If I bumped up to full-time (which I was supposed to do for July but I've been spending half of my time helping her with her crafting stuff, which is fine...it's still income) 40 hours a week I'd easily be clearing 4k a month, or basically 50k a year.
As you can see, her frustration lies in the fact that's she's working 40 hours a week and making less in an entire month than I make in a week, working half the hours. Enter the frustration of most Bulgarians, because they don't get paid a fair wage. It will be interesting to see what happens when the country finally switches to the Euro and companies are forced to pay on a European pay-scale, rather than on the antiquated Bulgarian pay-scale.
The downside is she really doesn't want to do what I do, but she is terrified of "not contributing". This is a huge issue for Evy. She cannot *stand* it when I'm the only person putting money in the bank account because she feels worthless. But as I discussed with her the other night, there are so many benefits to staying home and working out of the house that it would outweigh the fact she doesn't really want to write content for websites. But as I explained to her, she would only need to do a couple hours per day to make the same amount of money she's making in an entire month now, and she would have the rest of her time to spend working on her crafting business. Not to mention she wouldn't have to take the tram, deal with people, traffic, the heat, and otherwise.
In any case...it's progress. She'll know by the end of August what she wants to do. Her school starts back up in late September, and we are going to head to the seaside for a week around the first of September for a little vacation before she gets back into it. She's also looking at her Masters degree, and determining how she wants to do that. She also has the benefit of a mother who is funding *all* of her business outings. Her mom offered to pay for her pottery course, she is already paying for Evy's school, and she has already said she will give Evy a significant portion of start-up funds when she's ready to branch off with her landscaping business in a few years.
So, lots of irons in the fire. On the flip side, I've honestly been debating getting some tile tools and getting back into the industry on a two-or-three-time-a-year basis, with the emphasis on third generation, traditional craftsmanship. My clients would not be Bulgarians, but rather Westerners who are moving here, building vacation homes, and looking for skilled labor. I don't miss the business side of the industry, but I do miss the hands-on, arts-and-crafts side of designing and building something from the ground up that you can take a step back and be proud of. The issue would largely be pricing, because my rates back in the US were based upon 3 generations in the industry and 15 years of personal experience in the field. I'm not sure what that translates to here. Most spec homes that have around 1500 feet of natural stone in them go from 15 thousand USD on the low end, to around 30 thousand USD on the high end, just for labor alone. When we went up to the mountains yesterday for a picnic I happened to see a luxury home going up, and the entire face of the house was 18"x12" travertine stones, and the only thing I could think of watching the Bulgarian laborers was "those poor sods are probably only making 10-15k leva on a job that should have them making 70k USD minimum".
Just have to wait and see. They do things drastically different here in terms of construction, so I'm not sure if I would want to deal with the head-aches. But then again, if I could get into the right client base based upon my expertise in the field, it might be worth doing a couple few projects per year as long as I can pull a good 15-20k per project. A decent spec home job should run you about a month, and I could easily afford to pay a few local grunts double or triple what they currently make to give me a hand and deal with all the Bulgarian technicalities I'm not familiar with. Again...this is something that is absolutely nothing more than a little pea idea at the back of my head to simple make some extra blow money purely because I find myself with a *lot* of spare time on my hand since I'm not forced into working a 40 hour work week.
We'll see. Evy and I have sooo many ideas that it's hard to pick which ones we want to try out. At the end of the day it's just nice to know that I can make an easy 25-30k a year working part time, with our total living expenses around 6k USD...maybe 8k at most if we REALLY splurge on entertainment. We are at an interesting cross-roads right now. Debt free, and nothing but prospects on the horizon. I've honestly never been debt free, not since I was a teenager, so it's an interesting feeling. I mean, there is literally this weight lifted off my shoulders and both of us are looking ahead going "well, we can actually afford to try a lot of different things because our money isn't going towards living expenses. Let's try and make a couple of them pay off and see how it goes from there".
So yeah! It's exciting. I've already got the novel I'm working on, I've got short stories in rotation, I'm firmly established as a freelance writer and journalist, I've got a cook-book planned, Evy has her crafting shop about to launch in August, we've been talking about publishing a couple of magazines here in Bulgaria, I'm debating looking into a small-time custom ceramic tile and natural stone business here in Bulgaria for 2-3 projects a year, and who knows what else. Her mom mentioned starting a remodeling business last year with me playing supervisor to projects, but I'm still bound by the language barrier. I really need to hire a tutor this year, because I'm never going to actually go take classes, and when all my clients are English, all our friends speak English, and everywhere we go in Sofia people understand English...yeah, I'm not really learning Bulgarian at all.
That turned out loner than I expected :) Needless to say, I'm entirely grateful, I'm eternally blessed, and I'm absolutely hopeful. We are in a really unique situation right now in the sense that we are both young, we have our health, we have a multi-million dollar family business backing us up if we need it, and we are able to try out multiple projects simply to find out what we really want to do for the next 30 years or so. I love writing, and it's something I always wanted to do, so the last year and a half have been an absolute blast establishing myself in the field. I'm pretty much where I wanted to be (with the exception of having a novel published, but that'll happen eventually), and she's still spreading her wings and figuring it out. I can honestly say that I'm really, really looking forward to the rest of this year and next year.
It's largely her project, with me simply providing some consulting and doing some helping when I can. Largely I'm just her go-to person when she asks "what do you think about this idea?". Everything she's coming up with is absolutely her creations, and there are some really, really cool ideas. Also, like I said in another blog post, she's going to be taking a pottery course starting in September and gearing up to do ceramics as part of her shop as well.
We stayed up till nearly 4 a.m. Friday night discussing her quitting her part-time job. There are a lot of issues behind it, and she's not entirely sure if she will or not, but she will have a final decision on it by the end of August. Basically what it comes down to is the fact that she's working at a clinic here, and they pay Bulgarian wages. Which is essentially the same as Mexican wages. She works 40 hour weeks for a baseline salary of around 300 USD a month. She gets a 30% commission on procedures, so if she gets clients, that edges up to around 500-600 USD a month. She is the lowest person on the totem pole there. The doctors, and the girls who have been working there for several years, make comparable wages to most American and European workers...40k USD a year, roughly. However, Evy is nowhere near that level of expertise, and she is forced into working for what is considered the "average" Bulgarian wage....400-500 leva a month, or 300-400 USD a month.
This is why she is so keen to do "something else" while she's finishing up school. Now, the blessing with her job is that it's so relaxed that she can literally take a week off of work...whenever she wants. One of the girls just came back from 8 months of maternity leave. In America you would have been replaced for taking maternity leave that long.
It's not that she hates her job. She actually likes it, most days. It's the pay that is the issue. I'm sitting at home working a fraction of the hours she works and I'm pulling in significantly more than that. I basically make 25-30 dollars an hour at present with all my clients combined together, and I work 4-5 hours a day, so I'm doing about 2200-2500 a month. If I bumped up to full-time (which I was supposed to do for July but I've been spending half of my time helping her with her crafting stuff, which is fine...it's still income) 40 hours a week I'd easily be clearing 4k a month, or basically 50k a year.
As you can see, her frustration lies in the fact that's she's working 40 hours a week and making less in an entire month than I make in a week, working half the hours. Enter the frustration of most Bulgarians, because they don't get paid a fair wage. It will be interesting to see what happens when the country finally switches to the Euro and companies are forced to pay on a European pay-scale, rather than on the antiquated Bulgarian pay-scale.
The downside is she really doesn't want to do what I do, but she is terrified of "not contributing". This is a huge issue for Evy. She cannot *stand* it when I'm the only person putting money in the bank account because she feels worthless. But as I discussed with her the other night, there are so many benefits to staying home and working out of the house that it would outweigh the fact she doesn't really want to write content for websites. But as I explained to her, she would only need to do a couple hours per day to make the same amount of money she's making in an entire month now, and she would have the rest of her time to spend working on her crafting business. Not to mention she wouldn't have to take the tram, deal with people, traffic, the heat, and otherwise.
In any case...it's progress. She'll know by the end of August what she wants to do. Her school starts back up in late September, and we are going to head to the seaside for a week around the first of September for a little vacation before she gets back into it. She's also looking at her Masters degree, and determining how she wants to do that. She also has the benefit of a mother who is funding *all* of her business outings. Her mom offered to pay for her pottery course, she is already paying for Evy's school, and she has already said she will give Evy a significant portion of start-up funds when she's ready to branch off with her landscaping business in a few years.
So, lots of irons in the fire. On the flip side, I've honestly been debating getting some tile tools and getting back into the industry on a two-or-three-time-a-year basis, with the emphasis on third generation, traditional craftsmanship. My clients would not be Bulgarians, but rather Westerners who are moving here, building vacation homes, and looking for skilled labor. I don't miss the business side of the industry, but I do miss the hands-on, arts-and-crafts side of designing and building something from the ground up that you can take a step back and be proud of. The issue would largely be pricing, because my rates back in the US were based upon 3 generations in the industry and 15 years of personal experience in the field. I'm not sure what that translates to here. Most spec homes that have around 1500 feet of natural stone in them go from 15 thousand USD on the low end, to around 30 thousand USD on the high end, just for labor alone. When we went up to the mountains yesterday for a picnic I happened to see a luxury home going up, and the entire face of the house was 18"x12" travertine stones, and the only thing I could think of watching the Bulgarian laborers was "those poor sods are probably only making 10-15k leva on a job that should have them making 70k USD minimum".
Just have to wait and see. They do things drastically different here in terms of construction, so I'm not sure if I would want to deal with the head-aches. But then again, if I could get into the right client base based upon my expertise in the field, it might be worth doing a couple few projects per year as long as I can pull a good 15-20k per project. A decent spec home job should run you about a month, and I could easily afford to pay a few local grunts double or triple what they currently make to give me a hand and deal with all the Bulgarian technicalities I'm not familiar with. Again...this is something that is absolutely nothing more than a little pea idea at the back of my head to simple make some extra blow money purely because I find myself with a *lot* of spare time on my hand since I'm not forced into working a 40 hour work week.
We'll see. Evy and I have sooo many ideas that it's hard to pick which ones we want to try out. At the end of the day it's just nice to know that I can make an easy 25-30k a year working part time, with our total living expenses around 6k USD...maybe 8k at most if we REALLY splurge on entertainment. We are at an interesting cross-roads right now. Debt free, and nothing but prospects on the horizon. I've honestly never been debt free, not since I was a teenager, so it's an interesting feeling. I mean, there is literally this weight lifted off my shoulders and both of us are looking ahead going "well, we can actually afford to try a lot of different things because our money isn't going towards living expenses. Let's try and make a couple of them pay off and see how it goes from there".
So yeah! It's exciting. I've already got the novel I'm working on, I've got short stories in rotation, I'm firmly established as a freelance writer and journalist, I've got a cook-book planned, Evy has her crafting shop about to launch in August, we've been talking about publishing a couple of magazines here in Bulgaria, I'm debating looking into a small-time custom ceramic tile and natural stone business here in Bulgaria for 2-3 projects a year, and who knows what else. Her mom mentioned starting a remodeling business last year with me playing supervisor to projects, but I'm still bound by the language barrier. I really need to hire a tutor this year, because I'm never going to actually go take classes, and when all my clients are English, all our friends speak English, and everywhere we go in Sofia people understand English...yeah, I'm not really learning Bulgarian at all.
That turned out loner than I expected :) Needless to say, I'm entirely grateful, I'm eternally blessed, and I'm absolutely hopeful. We are in a really unique situation right now in the sense that we are both young, we have our health, we have a multi-million dollar family business backing us up if we need it, and we are able to try out multiple projects simply to find out what we really want to do for the next 30 years or so. I love writing, and it's something I always wanted to do, so the last year and a half have been an absolute blast establishing myself in the field. I'm pretty much where I wanted to be (with the exception of having a novel published, but that'll happen eventually), and she's still spreading her wings and figuring it out. I can honestly say that I'm really, really looking forward to the rest of this year and next year.
Friday, July 24, 2009
Latest MMO Life Article up
My latest MMO Life Network article is up. It is a continuation of the "gaming with your significant other" series. Enjoy.
Slacker!
Sort of. But not really.
I generally try to avoid working weekends, and I also don't work more than about 5 hours a day on the weekdays. I'm lucky in that I have a series of clients who don't really give me deadlines, other than on a month-to-month basis, so my schedule can be as flexible or as tight as it needs to be, depending on the circumstance. While this is a boon in one sense, it's a bane on the other hand because sometimes the knowledge that you can slack off leads to extending your personal deadlines a bit further than you would if someone was breathing down your neck about submission dates.
On the flip side...I don't miss the days of being a slave to the clock back in the States. I highly enjoy the European way of doing things...or rather, the Mediterranean way of doing things. Work a few hours in the morning, take the afternoon off, and maybe put in a couple more hours in the evening, spending the rest of the time enjoying life.
I skipped writing yesterday, not necessarily to slack, however. Evy was asked (and paid) by her mom to come paint her bedroom at the other downtown apartment. What she initially thought was a simple two day project looked like it was going to take her 4 days on her own, because it was significantly more challenging than she first anticipated. So I took a couple hours off on Wednesday to help her out, and then decided to spend the entire day yesterday helping her finish off the room. It took us about 7 hours, but we got the project finished.
So while I didn't get any writing done, we made some money anyway, which means it wasn't "wasted" time. And it's actually another branch project because her mother has been suggesting that Evy perhaps do painting part-time for friends of the family and such, basically doing projects every couple of months when they come up for some extra money from time to time.
Evy is about to take a pottery class starting in September. It's a professional class that takes 3 months to complete, and it's several hundred dollars. It's worth it, though, because it's another aspect of what she's going to be doing for her hand-crafted shop, which is making custom ceramics, ranging from kitchen items to decorative pieces, and with a professional course behind her she's not just some person who picked up a piece of clay and says "look what I made!". I'm tempted to take the course as well...I guess we'll have to wait and see where we are at by September and if I really want to take that extra creative load on my shoulders when I already have so many other irons in the fire.
I like diversity. I don't like being locked into just one source of money. Especially in today's climate, where you never know if the business which made you money prior is suddenly going to drop the bottom out from underneath you, leaving you without a job and no income. Right now we have three different sources of income, and we are about to start two additional. Also, if we follow through with these two magazines we've been talking about publishing, then there will be that additional income stream as well.
And at the end of the day, if something goes tragically wrong, there's always her family's business to fall back on. They've opened three new stores this year alone and I'm pretty sure by the end of this year they will be worth more than 20 million Euro as a business, which is saying a lot. Evy doesn't want to work for the company, and I don't blame her (her mother *never* has a spare moment to enjoy the money she works so hard for), there's always that last-ditch if the carpet gets yanked out from underneath us.
In any case...while I slacked on the writing, I don't feel that bad about it, because we were off making money in another area. I've also spent some time doing additional drafting to the outline for my novel, and refining ideas for the middle section, which I will start work on again in September. We are also planning a 5-6 day holiday to the Black Sea in September, for a much-needed seaside getaway. It's nice to be able to take half a dozen vacations of the year. LIP lifestyle ftw!
I generally try to avoid working weekends, and I also don't work more than about 5 hours a day on the weekdays. I'm lucky in that I have a series of clients who don't really give me deadlines, other than on a month-to-month basis, so my schedule can be as flexible or as tight as it needs to be, depending on the circumstance. While this is a boon in one sense, it's a bane on the other hand because sometimes the knowledge that you can slack off leads to extending your personal deadlines a bit further than you would if someone was breathing down your neck about submission dates.
On the flip side...I don't miss the days of being a slave to the clock back in the States. I highly enjoy the European way of doing things...or rather, the Mediterranean way of doing things. Work a few hours in the morning, take the afternoon off, and maybe put in a couple more hours in the evening, spending the rest of the time enjoying life.
I skipped writing yesterday, not necessarily to slack, however. Evy was asked (and paid) by her mom to come paint her bedroom at the other downtown apartment. What she initially thought was a simple two day project looked like it was going to take her 4 days on her own, because it was significantly more challenging than she first anticipated. So I took a couple hours off on Wednesday to help her out, and then decided to spend the entire day yesterday helping her finish off the room. It took us about 7 hours, but we got the project finished.
So while I didn't get any writing done, we made some money anyway, which means it wasn't "wasted" time. And it's actually another branch project because her mother has been suggesting that Evy perhaps do painting part-time for friends of the family and such, basically doing projects every couple of months when they come up for some extra money from time to time.
Evy is about to take a pottery class starting in September. It's a professional class that takes 3 months to complete, and it's several hundred dollars. It's worth it, though, because it's another aspect of what she's going to be doing for her hand-crafted shop, which is making custom ceramics, ranging from kitchen items to decorative pieces, and with a professional course behind her she's not just some person who picked up a piece of clay and says "look what I made!". I'm tempted to take the course as well...I guess we'll have to wait and see where we are at by September and if I really want to take that extra creative load on my shoulders when I already have so many other irons in the fire.
I like diversity. I don't like being locked into just one source of money. Especially in today's climate, where you never know if the business which made you money prior is suddenly going to drop the bottom out from underneath you, leaving you without a job and no income. Right now we have three different sources of income, and we are about to start two additional. Also, if we follow through with these two magazines we've been talking about publishing, then there will be that additional income stream as well.
And at the end of the day, if something goes tragically wrong, there's always her family's business to fall back on. They've opened three new stores this year alone and I'm pretty sure by the end of this year they will be worth more than 20 million Euro as a business, which is saying a lot. Evy doesn't want to work for the company, and I don't blame her (her mother *never* has a spare moment to enjoy the money she works so hard for), there's always that last-ditch if the carpet gets yanked out from underneath us.
In any case...while I slacked on the writing, I don't feel that bad about it, because we were off making money in another area. I've also spent some time doing additional drafting to the outline for my novel, and refining ideas for the middle section, which I will start work on again in September. We are also planning a 5-6 day holiday to the Black Sea in September, for a much-needed seaside getaway. It's nice to be able to take half a dozen vacations of the year. LIP lifestyle ftw!
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