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.