Anubis Drives Again

Anubis Drives Again:

Yes, I know, it has been almost 3 months,

            But my hands have not been idle. The project and progress towards my goal might have grown a little stagnant, but I’m back! And I’m sure with a little tender love and care, light dusting, some scrubbing, and maybe a little disinfecting, I can get this thing back on track.

Some explanations for the delay:

            After the last blog post I had planned to deal with some rather heavy subject matter in the next post (week 10, 11 or 12), but I could never get myself into the right frame of mind to delve deeply enough into the subject I wanted to cover. I’m being vague because I eventually want to explore the unnamed subject in a future post, but I don’t want to create too much anticipation for it. I don’t want my readers (or reader, singular. Hi, Charmane!) to be too disappointed every time they see that whatever current week it is, isn’t the week I talk about the ‘heavy subject matter.’

The end of fall quarter, and more importantly, Finals Week was fast approaching around the time I published the last post. Since I never had a relationship last past a finals week the whole time I went to Mt. Hood CC, no one should be too shocked that this project fell by the way-side. I’ve stated before that I will put academic pursuits ahead of this project. Why I didn’t pick it up again after finals week fall quarter 2013, is the next part.

            After finals week I was mentally drained. I wanted nothing more than to shut off my brain for a while and work on some mindless, though very practical, projects that I had put off in order to pass all of my fall quarter classes. I also managed to convince myself that cold-calling funeral home owners, managers and staff during the holiday season would probably do more harm than good. The thought then became ‘why make a report when there is nothing to report?’ Then, as with anything else, I fell out of the habit of writing the blog. That is how nearly three months passes between posts.

Now, here we are. Are you ready for some updates?

When I first noticed the weeks start to creep by, I expected at least a few of my friends to say something along the lines of  “Anh, I knew you weren’t going to stick to it,” however, apparently I have much better friends than I have ever had at any other point in my life. My friends have universally shown me support and encouragement over the last several months to continue to pursue this project. It’s all been very humbling to say the least.

Remember when I talked about getting a webcam for the project? I can’t remember how much I whined about the possible expense of purchasing such an item, but I know that cost was a big concern when I conceded that it was something that I was going to need for the project. I no longer have to worry about it. I got one for Christmas! It was from my dear mother (giving credit where credit is due). And if her giving it to me isn’t an overwhelming show of support from the person who, more than anyone else, taught me the value of practical, down-to-earth thinking, I don’t know what is.

At some point in the distant past, I joined the professional social networking site LinkedIn. I never really paid it any mind until last summer when I desperately needed a job and was exploring every possible avenue toward that end. I soon learned the value of the site for connecting to professionals and job openings, nationally as well as internationally. For the better part of the fall of 2013, the amount of connections I had hovered around the 30-40 range, but that number slowly crept upward. In the last month or so, I seemed to have reached some sort of tipping-point à la Malcolm Gladwell (I love Malcolm Gladwell. If that man has written something as obscure or as crude as a dirty limerick on a bathroom wall, I’d want to read it), and I’ve been getting new connection requests from people and professionals in the funeral industry about once a day. From all across the country too! Needless to say, I’m going to use this vast networking boom to my advantage when I really get serious about securing host funeral homes for this project.

By the way, if you are on LinkedIn, and you would like to connect with me, I’m Johnathan Hove, Pre-need sales person from West Richland, WA. You can type my name into google, but you’ll probably have to click the link that says ‘Search instead for Johnathan hove.’ I always do. The cross I have to bare for having a common, but slightly peculiarly spelled first name.

I’ve also grudgingly started a Twitter account. Whether or not I ever use the damned thing even after I start driving across the country, remains to be seen.

Now, The bad news:

Two major things dampened my spirit during my mental and blogging hiatus: My growing Student loan and credit card debt accumulated over the nearly five years of school and earning less than 20 thousand a year during that time, and the extra quarter of full time coursework I need to complete my degree.

The extra quarter isn’t really that big of a deal. When I first thought up this project, I expected that I would need to attend summer quarter 2014. After it looked like I could graduate Spring quarter 2014 I didn’t move up the start of the project from September because I realized that having a solid three months of planning time unencumbered by coursework, would probably be a reasonable amount of time to iron out any last little wrinkles in the year-long, cross-country adventure. Not having those three months makes pushing back the time frame so I still have a goodly chunk of time to plan seems like it might be the best course of action. Especially when you consider the fact that I plan to fund my trip through crowd-sourcing with Kickstarter or something similar (which raises other concerns and considerations that I’ll discuss later). Does this now mean that I will now start my trip in late November or early December? Given my plan to go in a south, north, south, north state-to-state pattern, starting at that time may not be too much of a challenge.

There is also the possibility of braking up the project into three or four month chunks. This was an idea brought up by Heather Dvorak (owner/operator of Dvorak Funeral Home. Have I said before how brilliant I think this woman is? I count myself very lucky that she thought it was worth her time to hire me) when I first told her of my idea. At the time I thought ‘No way. That would take too much time!’ I then proceeded to throw myself on the ground, beat my fists into the carpet and scream, red-faced and crying, “NOW! NOW! NOW! I WANNA DO IT NOW!!!” but only in my mind. Here we are nearly six months later, and only now am I thinking that what she suggested when I first brought up my idea for this project, might be my best course of action. Like I said, she’s a brilliant woman.

I would normally go on to talk about the debt I’ve acquired and will continue to acquire until and even after I earn my degree, but I want to end on a high note. I’m also tired of writing, and you’re probably tired of reading. So, I’ll end here.

Oh! I almost forgot: on Halloween 2013, my dear sweet Suzuki, Laura, reached 100,000 miles on her odometer! What a milestone! Yes, this did happen before the last post so I should have mentioned it in the last post. So, I guess I did forget.

Like last time and all the times before, if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions, spelling or grammatical corrections (how will I ever learn if no one ever says anything), words of support or encouragement, confessions of love, hate-filled rantings of utter distain, or anything else for me, do not hesitate to email me at funhomeambo@gmail.com.

I’ll post a new one next week. I really do mean it this time. Feel free to e-mail me and call me a loser if I don’t live up to my self-imposed deadline.

Hope you enjoyed it and I thank you for reading all of this or skipping to the end, whichever is the case.

Johnathan Hove

Tune in next week for the next exciting chapter in this ensuing drama: The Looming Specter of Debt!