Well - let me start out by saying I think about posting on Steemit every day and I do miss sharing my world with you guys. It's been about two months and things have been hectic to say the least!

For starters my wife and I moved to....

Well technically not Jersey City - but it's hard to capture a photo that says New Jersey. There aren't any landmarks that scream NJ - except perhaps the view of Manhattan.

(More on this picture on my next post.)

My wife accepted a job offer in Montclair New Jersey and we moved on the 28th of December. We finally made it from MA to NJ and the plan was to unload the Uhaul truck and we'll unpack tomorrow.

Believe it or not - we rented the biggest truck and all of our earthly possessions didn't fit!

Our new neighborhood.

Saturday morning we headed to the supermarket, fed everyone then got to unpacking. One highlight is that we now live near a Fairway supermarket! It's my favorite supermarket in the world and now it's only 15 minutes away!

Everything was going smoothly and I couldn't thank everyone enough for giving us a hand and coming through. I felt like I owed everyone big time as moving is a humungous pain in the ass. It was a long and rough move between last minute packing and getting here. What should have been a 4 hour drive ended up being almost 8 - but that's another story.

Around 8:30pm I'd say we were about 98% done with unpacking and putting things away...

Then disaster happened!

My brother in law came running down from the 3rd floor and he nonchalantly said he drilled into a pipe (while trying to mount the tv to the wall). He asked me where was the shutoff valve. I wasn't sure where it was but then I remembered the floor plan and showed him where it was.

We turned off the valve and if you're a handy man you know where I'm going with this - as the water just kept pouring. We decided to call the fire department as he drilled into the sprinkler pipe and only the fire department has the authority to shut off the water.

We shut off the electricity to the house and it was pandemonium. We used whatever lights we had (mostly cellphone lights) and I started taking out my hard drives, cameras and electronics outside. While I was trying to salvage things that were important to me people on the second floor were using plastic bins to collect water and throw it out the window.

The kids were confused, my doggies freaking out and I wanted to cry - but I couldn't as I had to keep things cool and stay calm for everyone involved. Plus I knew I was in for a long night and crying at this time wouldn't solve anything but make things worse.

I went up a few times and I COULDN'T BELIVE THIS WAS ALL HAPPENING. It was one of those rare times in life where your'e in the middle of a scenario and you're just hoping that this is all a nightmare - but it wasn't.

We live in a townhouse and ground zero was on the 3rd floor. The best way I can describe the disaster - it was like a waterfall on the 2nd floor. Water was coming through the ceiling where the lights are. It was so bad and unreal that I didn't even want to go upstairs.

Eventually the water was turned off and the staff here allowed us to stay in another vacant apartment. I sent everyone to the other home and I stayed behind to deal with the fire department and maintenance staff here.

We had to wait for a cleanup crew to come assess the damage. Since it was a Saturday night (probably around 11pm by now) they couldn't send a crew to start cleaning up. And by cleaning up - I mean ripping all of the carpeting, floors and celling. They said they'd come in the morning with an additional 18 people.

As this is all happening I'm praying that the home insurance went through and how much is this going to cost us. My wife immediately got on the phone and told me the deductible was going to be $10,000. I knew it was incorrect but I didn't have time to make sure she was incorrect (which she was) as I was in the middle of triage mode.

But in the midst of all this drama I knew it was going to be a huge setback. Not only with time but financially as we maxed out every card we had, as well as borrow money to make this move happen. The main reason we moved is for my wife to level up to a vice president position. Plus we'd also be closer to home (New York City) and if anything were to happen with our parents and family a 1 hour ride is better than 4.

Insult to injury.....

When everything that can be done, was done I went to the other apartment. Right before I went to bed my wife told me someone stole her wedding ring as well as my sister in law's wedding ring as well. We're not sure who took them but it could have been anyone. They left the rings in the bathroom (near ground zero on the 3rd floor) and when they were in the middle of evacuating they noticed they were gone.

Luckily the insurance paperwork did go through the day before but we didn't have jewelry insurance. But I was relieved to know the deductible was only going to be $500. This was a huge relief as I'm thinking the repairs were going to cost in the range of $50,000. I could be off - but it's going to be a huge bill to fix everything.

The next morning...

My wife still had 1 more week at her job. She took the doggies with her (as the plan was for them to stay with me). The apartment complex allowed me to stay until Tuesday and I knew I had to stay in a hotel for at least a week or two and I didn't feel comfortable having to watch the doggies in a hotel.

I kissed her goodbye and now it was time to start adulting. I started moving things around to make it easy for the workers to do what they had to do. I started moving things downstairs to the garage and consolidating things like our furniture to give them space.

Then around 8am a cleanup crew of about 20 people showed up and that's when I lost it.

I wasn't upset at my brother in law as that could have happened to anyone - and it was a mistake - he was just trying to help. I felt awful and honestly if that was me I'd want to (figuratively) kill myself. But what really killed me was the fact someone was so grimy enough to steal the rings.

But when I saw all of these people in my home I started getting emotional as all of these strangers were now in my home and now they have the potential to steal anything. It felt intrusive (for want of a better word) and I was in a bad place mentally.

It's like everything was going well, I'm in a new chapter in my life and now everything was a complete disaster. Maybe I'm being dramatic - but you know what I mean. No one died, and a fire would have been way worse as there wouldn't have been time to salvage anything.

Long story short

There were a lot of little things to add more drama in the following days. Like one of the workers taking a poop upstairs, only for me to come in 2 days later being unable to flush the toilet (and it smelling like death in the house. Gizmo also injured himself really bad and he was banged up for several days. It's rare when he gets hurt and it's really sad as he's a really tough doggy. So when he's hurt - he's really hurt.

It took me about 2 weeks to get to a better place and every time I had to tell this story it got shorter and shorter as I had a hard time telling the story to people without me crying. But I also feel like I owe it to you guys by letting you know why I seemingly dropped off the face of the earth.

I had to live out of a hotel for a week and we ended up taking another unit on the other side of the complex. We had to move again but it was easier this time as we just moved everything from one room - to the same room at the new place (since it has the same exact floor plan).

Moving forward.

As much as I'd love to post daily like I used to - unfortunately I'll be unable to as the rent at our new place is freaking outrageous. It's to the point where we'd be better off buying our own place and it'd make more sense now since my wife wants to work in NJ for 15 more years then retire.

I'll still be going to Boston to service clients I've made out there. It may sound crazy but I'm used to the ride because while I was in Boston I'd go to NYC at least a few times a month. But I have to grind now as I have to start networking out here in my neighborhood.

I have a plan and it requires a lot of time grinding and driving for Uber / Lyft to plug in the financial holes. You see - when you work for yourself you don't get a weekly check. And oftentimes you have money floating out there from clients that owe you money.

Regarding Steemit I'll be using Steempress to kill 2 birds with 1 stone. I have several websites that I run and I'll be writing content for SEO (search engine optimization) purposes.

For the foreseeable future you'll be seeing posts regarding weddings, marketing and a few behind the scenes videos here and there. Perhaps I'll even write about my experiences driving Uber in NJ and Lyft in Boston (but we'll see).

I wish I could be as active as I was last year with Steemit Bloggers but I don't have the luxury of time as of now. I will however still be upvoting you guys whenever I can to show some love.

I think I covered everything that I wanted to share with you guys. Please excuse any typos and this was a long post and I've got to do some more "adulting" now.

On a final note here's an image of the pipe that wreaked havoc...

Oh, and on a final, final note Gong Hay Fat Choy (happy new years) to all of my Chinese people out there!

HUGS and expect another post soon!
Mikey Colon