Homeless and Jobless

Well, maybe not as bad as all that.


It's been a couple weeks now since we've gotten back to the Hometown. Welcome back to the midwest, what to do now after all the big "good-byes" have been said? "Oops, we will be here a little while longer..."


We arrived back after our departure-turned-into-vacation from Florida and immediately began to seek ways to become useful and at the same time gainfully (self) employed. I have not worked full time for myself in almost six years, but as a commercial artist I have been doing side-work for some time, so now it was time to turn side-work into real work. Fortunately, since we do not have a mortgage to pay, we are not needing to make particularly huge sums of money to live on. Also, there are any number of dear friends that are making the rounds of, "come stay with us for a few days." We are somewhat of a celebrity, or perhaps at least an oddity, it seems that moving to the middle east by choice these days requires a lot of explaining.


So, some background may be appropriate at this juncture.


I am now 45 years old, and have been in the commercial art field my entire working life. I had started out wanting to be a technical illustrator, but while waiting for a job opening I got a job at a small sign shop. It was there that I fell in love with the written letter, and was trained as a sign painter. I worked solely as a signwriter for 13 years, then made a move to Tulsa, Oklahoma and spent most of my time there behind a computer doing printed-page design and layout.


While in Tulsa I became acquainted with a gentleman working in Tallinn, Estonia. Looking for a change of pace and a new opportunity, we took advantage of an offer to move to northern Europe and lived and worked in Estonia for three years, 2000-2003. My wife and I had travelled to Europe several times, to England, France, Finland, and then Lithuania twice. We liked the Baltic States so the move to Estonia was a wonderful time for the four of us, out children being with us in the move.


Coming back to the USA in the fall of 2003, I started working for the Boeing Company as a contract graphic artist in 2004. Boeing sold its Wichita plant in 2005, and I was offered a full-time position as a graphic designer with the new company, Spirit AeroSystems.  I worked for Spirit for five years and loved every minute of it.

As an occasional signwriter I was keeping my skills up and charging as much as I liked--a nice by-product of not relying on it to make my living. Perhaps because hand lettering is more of a specialty these days I have been blessed to be able to charge a premium and get it. So, I have been doing a fair amount of lettering and pinstriping and getting a good return on it. And I love doing it.


I also have been doing typesetting and ad design on pharmacy bags for The Salesman pretty regularly now. It's good work and we are able to do it anywhere we can get an internet connection, so we will be doing this work for some time to come. There are also some other electronic design work coming around, so we are confident that we will not be checking in at the homeless shelter any time soon.

We are not really homeless anyway, its just that our house is not in the Hometown. It is about two hours drive south of here. We were invited two years ago now to visit a friend in a smallish cabin community north of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. I'm not an Okie, but we really enjoyed this little place on the river. We enjoyed it so much that when Todd told us of a place for sale, and asked us if we might be interested, we purchased our own little cabin by the river. We call it Serenity. We own it outright, and the cost of keeping it are very minimal. We just spent five days down there and it is a wonderful place to get away from it all.


We are back in the Hometown tonight, getting ready to accomplish some work that we've lined up tomorrow. We are here until Tuesday, November 2, election day. On Tuesday, after we vote out all the bad guys and vote in all the new good ones, we are driving to Colorado Springs to take part in a conference on Azerbaijani Business Interests. We are really excited to be able to attend this conference, we went to the same event last year in Minnesota, and a number of individuals that were there last time will be there again. It will be a nice opportunity to re-acquaint with other like-minded business people. The Coffeeman will also be there. With regard to him, we just established our website for The Business, and that is an exciting milestone.


Work continues for The Business, Shah Asari, which means, "Masterpiece." The Business will be a cultural center of sorts, 30% art presentation display gallery, 30% family-friendly gathering space, and 40% coffee shop. Coffee is still a relatively new beverage for this tea-based culture, so we are hopeful that the coffee shop will be the income generating arm in the beginning. We are also hopeful that the gallery will draw local artisans and customers/collectors to the space and eventually outpace the coffee shop income. The other arm of the Business is to establish a space where women and women with children are accepted on equal terms with all patrons. The Coffeeman, a resident of this Azerbaijan city of 300,000 does not know of one. There are a couple that are women-only, so we are seeking to present a place where all are welcome, and all are respected.


So, I am exited to see what next week brings in regard to what the other expatriate Azerbaijan business people are doing about the visa situation and how to get one. Ill be sure to let you know.