‘All good things must end’, ‘Therein lies the rub’ and countless other cliche phrases have been attributed to the down slide from what was once a promising incline. Fact of the matter is – I’m broke. Not like the broke I mentioned a few months ago which was me seeing the end of the funds, but this time, they’re officially all gone. Like…dodging landlord broke. BROKE broke.

My final payment of 37,000rmb ($5000+) is the last thing I have coming to me and this has been the major disappointment of the past few months. A large agency in town (as in LARGE) brought me on to produce2 shows, one was completed 2 1/2 months ago, the other was suspended at the beginning (they still asked us to submit work done up until that point, which we did) and this agency has been simply given me the runaround. To them, 5 large is nothing, they have it in their petty cash, yet for some reason, they’ve been dragging their feet. At the risk of sounding self-righteous, I have reached the point of damn-near begging them for the money, which shouldn’t ever happen…seeing how the last project I did for them received not only an award, but drew around 30% of the traffic to their site (HUGE company, name withheld for now). Sad thing is, I have hosts, producers and engineers to pay with that, so won’t be seeing much…at all.

And that’s it – the small column I write, which I love, only pays my mobile phone bill (increased now that I got my internet shut off and get email on my phone) and there are only so many more bands we can shoot in town meaning that little extra will be drying up soon as well.

I haven’t dealt with this in a long, long time – even when I first moved to Beijing, I was pulling in 5000rmb ($690) which, at least it was a constant.

This really sucks, I have people I owe and feel bad even emailing them.

So – the light at the end of my little tunnel of despondency:

1. A new friend offered to design my press kit for free (is it strange that in her hands are 7-8 articles on me and I’m broke?) which is one of the bigger blessings I’ve had these past few weeks.

2. I have a meeting tomorrow which could, if greenlit, make me a VJ of sorts…paid gig.

3. Another meeting on Monday for a few smaller projects which now seem lifesaving in retrospect.

4. While on holiday (that blog & pics to come) I decided that this year, I’ll stop f*cking around and get out the first draft of my book. I came home to find out to a good friend (and published author of 12 novels) is moving to Shanghai and offered to help me every step of the way.

5. I really only need 10,000rmb ($1400) a month to live if I need.

…I do feel the need to point out that I write this blog only for a select few in mind (mostly myself) and do not want this to be anything other than one entry in my ever-exciting life of change. ‘Poor me’ is not the intended emotion, more like ‘This should be interesting’.

Just wish me luck.