though there are a few more steps for trustworthy others to follow through on. All should be fine. Legal agreements are signed and in place. I can relax, and regard this second matter as finished.

I had bad financing on my rental spots before this, and because of the horrid penalties, was best off waiting for the terms to expire before reworking everything, and although it should have gone smoothly, despite my conscientious efforts, it just didn’t. But that is fine – everything is set up in a much more positive way for the next phase. Now I have great tenants, a well maintained property with many nice upgrades, and some step by step plans for the next ones, and proper financing. What a difference from this time, a year ago. That was a ton of work, with some pretty scary and weird episodes along the way. Just the amount of turnover and vacancies I had in one six month period was like nothing I’ve seen before last year, and was really challenging financially and logistically.

I am just debating whether to actually cry from relief. (Considered, rejected.) I feel like I’ve just made my way to shore. 14 months ago

This other mess has also been hanging over my head for ages. It is now 90% resolved. I think I am, as of an hour ago, actually through all the tough stuff. I have been refinancing some stuff, and the whole process has been a festival of bank bureaucracy gone mad. Everything is in order, and the deal is sound and conservative by their criteria, and yet… the process to take care of this has been unbelievable, including the part where the bank simply lost the file for one of two near-identical deals I am working on. How is that even possible? I have no idea.

I tell you: when this is truly done, after that next, final trip to my lawyer’s to sign the last documents, I will breath another big sigh of relief.

On gigantic mess #1, so far so good. The first day afterwards, they sent me a bunch of questions, but all has been quiet since then, and I am starting to believe that it is truly over.

I have found these two matters really stressful. 14 months ago

It took half an hour to upload the zip file onto their servers. That was a project that lasted seven years. It has taken a good chunk of my mind all that time.

I feel distressed and disoriented, like something has been ripped from me. I know I am going to feel very relieved, and very happy soon, but right now, it’s just … uncomfortable and weird.

I’m also very tired, as I have slept perhaps 4-5 hours each of the last few nights, as I have been feeling very anxious about all of this.

I feel like I lost a lot to that project – too many evenings, weekends, nights when I should have been sleeping for not nearly enough satisfaction or reward. I don’t know what would have made it seem worthwhile to me, but the rewards were minimal.

Right now, mostly I feel old, regretting that I did that work as long as I did.

Beau is running a workshop this evening.

I’m starting to experience a flicker or two of relief that I can deal with everything else in my life without having that matter following around like my own personal, permanent hailstorm.

This is the weirdest emotional feeling – like I’m in pain, and feeling loss and regret and sadness, but in reality, this is an incredibly positive and helpful change that just brought to an end a huge source of stress… I am speculating about the conservatism of my brain and body that I am experiencing the loss of this yucky thing as distressing rather than simply dancing with joy.

I am now an ex-programmer.

I will need a new answer when someone asks me, “What do you do?” I guess for now, the answer will have to be, “I don’t know,” or … “Not much.” 14 months ago

I have some technical stuff to do to close this off. I thought I’d be able to sit down and knock it off but…

- we were staying with an ill relative and taking care of him and it was not at all conducive to settling into technical work and focusing
- we were moving back to our place when his primary person returned and just making that mental & physical transition, while still having half our minds and hearts with him in his difficult, sad, scary circumstances

but #1: this is a task and set of emotionally and technically fraught circumstances that I think would bring out the procrastinator in many generally likeable people, however annoying it is. My task involves loading an older version of my software onto a hostile, rival firm’s server. This is software from a project I walked off almost half a year ago, so my mind is far from the details of anything to do with the stuff, and there are aspects of preparing the code for shipment that are all one time, therefore unfamiliar and slightly tricky tasks. I’ve got a couple of questions in my mind about my source code repository, so there’s a lot of haziness about which versions of which programs were in the three different environments. It kills me that they want the production version, as I so greatly overhauled and refactored and improved some hoary old sections. If some other programmer is going to be reading my code, I’d rather they read the newer versions that are a lot better. Yeah, yeah, the old ones work, but they’ll be a drag to modify compared to the nifty way I handled some things in the new one. And, yes, I know none of this is my concern and all I need to do is SHIP THE DAMN THING.

Back to my list of prep steps that I’ve worked out, and I’ll see how far I get before I leave for one of my other jobs in an hour or so.

Catch you later. 14 months ago

We’ve reached an agreement, and there is a signed release in place. I have to do some things which I should be able to get done this weekend, and then I am free. I’m not quite allowing myself to think about that until I am truly done, but I will be sooooo glad….

In the last 24 hours, three separate legal agreements regarding different matters in my two businesses have finally been negotiated, after long journeys for each one. With all, there are a few more things to deal with, but it is reasonable to expect this is the downhill slope and within another three or four days, everything related to these will be completely taken care of.

Gotta get to work now, but things are looking much, much better.

I am going to get to have personal interests again! Though, I also have to complete a ton of work at my job which is scheduled to end in about another month, which is the same time the lease at our home comes up for renewal, so there is a lot of transition and change on the horizon. This is a very good thing. 14 months ago

Is there no end? Their correspondence has a semi-hysterical ring to it, and their plans make no sense. If I just do what they ask, it will not actually solve their problems or help them or assure me the situation is moving towards closure. The situation remains volatile, and an exercise in pure misery.

I am currently planning to never work in this field again, and certainly never as a self-employed person where I have to deal with the legal and accounting aspects. This project lasted 7 years, which is an eternity in software. It is surely and definitely time for me to seek any new opportunities in any field as far from this as I can get.

I have 1.5 months left at the part-time maternity leave position I currently hold – another gig involving statistical programming, data mush. I am fantasizing about a basic landscaping job. I think I could use a sabbatical away from desks, computers, etc. A summer mowing lawns sounds positively therapeutic, as long as someone else owns the business. 14 months ago

And now they are making all kinds of demands for me to do further work related to the hand-over.

The copyrights, liabilities, etc, etc, are all a big pile of murk. I want to be done. I thought I was done. I keep thinking I have done everything they requested, which I have, and then they keep changing the terms or adding to their list of requests with, “Well, we just assumed that of course you would also do this, that, or the other thing, so saw no need to mention that to you before 4.5 months after you walked out saying we’d made a good outcome to the project impossible.” I told them that I would not accept payment for the failed, fixed-bid project that had been a miserably managed, botched up time sink.

We just blew our very modest honeymoon savings on a recommended IP lawyer, and it wasn’t enough for him to be able to prepare a usable draft of a release if I meet their next b.s. set of requests. I’m still struggling financially after a business year-from-hell last year, working hard at ferocious debt pay down through piling whatever other straight employment work I can get my hands on.

I feel like small animals are eating my insides with this situation, and feel way, way out of my depth. And emotionally, mentally, physically, I feel I am on the wrong side of some personal limit or capacity in this situation.

The whole project turned into a gigantic pile mess, and everyone created the fuck-up. We are all to blame. But I raised alarm bells and warnings all along the way and they ignored them. I swear, they are just starting to clue in to what I have been warning them about for a year. 15 months ago