Ok, so one of those serendipitous events, totally outside my control, but certainly not outside my ability to profit from.
Last Tuesday, around 930am, the couple I saw on a regular basis to exchange cash for gabo, simply disappeared.
I know noone who was real friends with them, but I know a dozen people who were there acquaintances. Consequently noone has been to their house or rung a relative to check that this couple are still alive, not murdered and locked in a car boot in a long term airport park. But amongst the acquaintances, a story has emerged.
The couple had a run in with schnarbs the day before they disappeared. Names and addresses were taken down and the couple allowed to continue on their way.
But in this instance perhaps, the schnarbs who took their details were more active than most, and arranged a raid the next morning. So at 930am on Tuesday morning, the couples' mobile turned off, and still hasn't come on yet, 5 days later.
That may not sound like a long delay.
But for people living in eight hour cycles, people who get sick not long after injecting $200 of gabo, a day is a lifetime. You have to keep turning over again and again to stay unsick. It's a constant struggle to get bulk gear so you can take your percentage and sell the rest to recover what you initially invested. So the phone being off for ten minutes is annoying but understandable - the dealer's usually seeing their dealer who wants phones turned off. For two hours usually means some kind of short term police action. A day means a court case. Five days means they're gone.
So what can I profit from this? Ten years ago, the profit to me would have been seeing a business opportunity and gaining new customers.
Today the profit is that I have no easy way to score anymore, that if I do not put effort into looking for a new dealer, I will be in a situation possibly where I could get paid, and keep the funds for bills and food (just had another weekend without a grocery shop).
I hope this eventuates!
Other stuff- expensive day, went riding a dude's motorbike and I dropped it - I was terrible with the clutch, and although I rode for five minutes, I went to park up a hill and stalled, then the 180 kilos of bike toppled over, stabbing my foot with an alloy peg and breaking front left indicator, hand clutch control rear gear shift frame protecting "puck" plus scratching some plastic abrasion protectors.
I was so mortified, everyone was very nice, telling me it's only plastic and metal, it can all be fixed, but I don't hear peoples' platitudes, I just hear my echoing failure. How stupid I felt and I will be cringing from this in years to come. Tomorrow I am meant to start driving a Camry, an auto, but right now I feel like I should not be allowed to control a shopping trolley.
A lot of the problem stems from my inability to say No to people being nice to me. I said things like "I will drop your bike, it's been years since I rode a bike, the bike I used to use is a hand shift...." but I guess they thought i was being self deprecating as I often am and discounted my words. That's fair enough given my usual behaviour of exclaiming how useless I am at most things.
Today I paid for my previous humility. And after dropping the lovely new bike the bike owner had to drop me into town to the train station to get back.
I think I have an inkling of how I'd feel if I was totally incapacitated and had to have my bottom wiped by strangers every day for the rest of my life.