Friday, Oct. 19, 2012 11:14 a.m.

6 weeks w/o a paycheck

Blah. K is going on 6 weeks without a paycheck. It's not like he was laid off or fired or can claim unemployment. No, he's "supposed" to eventually be paid for those weeks, but at this point, hope has kind of faded. I suppose there's still the possibility, and it could happen (and it is "supposed" to), but we need the money NOW, not in the future, so that promise doesn't really do anything for us for the time being.

How do we go from being at a good, steady, comfortable place with money - to feeling poor and worried about being able to pay our bills? Our income has almost been cut in half. I had to change all our credit cards (that we were on a really good plan to pay off in the next several months) to bare bones minimum payments. Which means the interest is going to build up and make it all even harder to pay off. Blah.

I've never seen K like this. Depressed and dejected. He feels like a failure and I do everything within my power as a wife to remind him how much he is loved, how amazing of a father he is, how thankful I am to have him as my husband. I remind him that he DOES have a job (even if he's not getting paid for it...) and at least has the promise of getting a large backpayment sum eventually. There is hope. He's not hopeless. We're not hopeless.

This past year, he has had MANY writing projects go out, has done many meetings, have been considered a potential hire as a write on several shows. He has yet to get any of them and he has yet to have any of his projects be picked up. I remind him how cool it is that he had a show idea to to CW, and that now other networks are looking at it, but it's hard for him to see this. He just wants results. It doesn't matter how many people have read his stuff; if no one want wants to pay him for it, what good does being red do him?

I understand his point and I understand his discouragement. He works so hard. He tries so hard. He does so well. But this is a cruel, cruel industry. He's 10 years in and feels like he should be so much more successful by now. He wants to be the best husband and father possible and provide for his family and he feels as though he is not doing that.

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We've been talking about having another kid. Ok, we WANT to have another kid. I never went on back on birth control after C. At first we were just letting nature take it's course, but for the past 2 months, we've actually be desirous of getting pregnant. Another negative test today. I know I shouldn't be bummed. That was my whole goal this time around - to not take is seriously and let myself get upset. I have C and I love C and I'm eternally grateful for C. If it happens again, it will happen when it's meant to happen.

But now that C is a year old and I know that people know it's about time to start thinking about another - it does stress me out. I read blogs of other old college friends who had a baby around C's age and I'm waiting for them to announce a new pregnancy - so I'm sure they are waiting for the same from me. And it sucks. I just wanted it to happen magically this time around. Without trying or thinking about it.

It's been 6 months since I got my period back - and I'm starting to both try and think about it.

AND - all of this makes no sense since we're struggling financially right now too! But I hope, I hope, that this is just temporary and that if we did get pregnant that finances would sort themselves out before they needed to be.

But I'm not going to lie: while getting a positive today would've been scary and I think I would've been worried to stress K out even more right now with added responsibility - it also would've been something to cheer him, and myself up - at least in the fertility dept, he might have no longer felt like a failure (and since he hasn't been check for almost 2 years, we have no idea if things are any better in that dept either).

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