Generation C

Just like that, my refinance paperwork was submitted and we scheduled the appraiser and he just did his thing and left. Still not set in stone but my refinance guy says if all goes well we should be funded in two weeks. What a long odyssey this has been since I made that first phone call in March! Honestly even if I weren’t doing it for a year’s worth of money to live on, it’s worth doing - I’m lowering my interest rate by a full point, consolidating my old HELOC, and getting a fixed rate finally. This even with the extra money and my payments won’t go up at all. So yay for that. Someday I’ll be able to aggressively pay it down again. The kids will be grown up when it’s paid off rather than starting junior high, but oh well! 

I had a good chat with my new streamer guy who had some ideas for my virtual event, so I’m just going to go with him. I reached out to my instructors and a few have written back glad that I’m still trying to offer something. Also, I finally heard back from the hotel that they will not penalize me for cancelling, which is great news. 

In light of all this, I have decided that even though I can’t announce it publicly, I’m going to go ahead and contact my paid attendees to get the refunds going. This is going to be hard. So far I have been in a very privileged, protected state - almost no one has asked for their money back, and almost no one has asked any questions. Now I’m going to have to contend with 500 people all at once and I’m sure at least some of them will have some opinions about what I’m doing, and some of them may not be nice. It’s not going to be a pleasant few weeks as I unravel all of this, watch my bank account get depleted, and deal with the emotional fallout that’s been on hold for nearly three months. I need to just put my Professional Event Organizer Hat on and try not to let it get to me. No more hiding from it; it’s time to face this thing head-on.

But at least at the end of it, I’ll know two things: how much money I’ll actually have, and how many online competitors I’ll have. So for informational purposes this is all very necessary. Other event organizers have said their patrons have been very generous. The good thing is my event is big enough and established enough that it’s very beloved; the bad thing is because it’s so big people may not recognize that we still need help. We’ll see. Last week I wrote out my cancellation notice in preparation and made sure everyone knew how financially devastating this is for my family; hopefully people get it. 

Teachers have been posting a statement from LAUSD that seemed to say there will be no school at all in the fall - that due to the overwhelming restrictions and budget cuts, opening schools is simply impossible. Parents are pissed. As people slowly start to go back to work, I don’t know wtf is going to happen with these kids. Again, extremely grateful that I can just stay with them all day even if I don’t want to. At least I have that option. Although I freely admit, now that we finally have a system down, I am absolutely terrified of starting all over again in 1st and 3rd grade with new teachers and new systems...ugh. I wish we could just keep everything like it is now. Boy are these kids getting robbed of a normal childhood right now. Generation C, indeed.