A Nightmare Come True: The Residual Effect

The biggest problem with the crap year we had, wasn't anything that actually happened during our season. The biggest problem lies with the residual effect. It's no secret I've lead a life of, well, poverty more or less during the entire span of my chasing career. I only know one way to make it work, and that way, unfortunately, doesn't always translate to success that can be projected throughout a year in my normal life; somehow, some way, no matter how successful my chase season was, I always end up paying for it somewhere down the road. The residual effect. But, in almost every year of my chasing life, there's been at least one day that made all the residual effect downtime misery worth it. One great chase event documented on video, makes a 9-10 month span of "just getting by" misery acceptable. Multiple great events in a given season make it almost forgettable.

But this year, there was no great event. No payoff. No physical manifestation to point at and say "there, that justifies the previous 9-10 months' worth of crappy living." So now that we're thrust back into a particularly nasty residual effect, I find myself asking "what the fuck was it all for?" To the nomadic chaser, whose entire season is a single, weeks-long trek with no breaks, having a bad year means they had a bad vacation. To the hobbyist, it just means it was a dull season. But for people like us, who live to chase, and base every major decision around it, we basically just lost a year of our lives. If you would've told me that our 2011 season would've been the fruitless waste of time it was, around July of last year, then we would've done things differently. We would've invested all the time/money we put into chasing into other things to enhance our lifestyle, we would've started a nest egg. If Bridget and I weren't chasers, and had all the money we put into chasing, we'd be in another tax bracket. But there is no way to know in advance what a chase season holds, or what the future in general holds. That's part of the appeal; chasing is a gamble, but the rewards are a kind of sugary sweet that knows no rival.

But it doesn't change the fact: we basically lost a year of our lives. So dealing with the aftermath, as we are right now, is kind of uncharted territory. I make it through well enough, because of that eternal hope gene I talked about a few posts back, but it's still a constant source of stress and worry. I find myself in situations at work, where the other guys are discussing business ideas, and I'm thinking to myself "I wonder how long it's gonna be before I can get another car?"...."It's June, I should still be chasing"...."I wonder how long it's gonna be before I have enough good material to make another DVD?"

That's where my head is, all the time, 24/7/365. Because I'm here to chase. That's why I walk the earth. That's why I draw breath. Everything else is just something to wade through, dabble in occasionally, and try like hell to not let corrupt my next chase season.