Behind Steg Rex: Finances

I want to thank two of my friends, JC Miguel and Diane Velasco. They saved my worthless skin.

Before I go on, let me explain to you: money is tight these days. (No shit, Sherlock!)

As you no doubt know, the American economy is in a recession. Bernanke, chairman of the Fed has made a bunch of unprecedented moves in the history of the institution in order to avert the economic situation from overwhelming the civil society.

Jobs have been hard to find, people are less willing to spend money, and selling music has been very tough.

It didn't help me at all, because I had no money to finance Steg Rex (equipment, general capital, promoting, marketing...)

I graduated from Cal in December, just when people were realizing that the job market was cooling down, and things became pricier. Being unemployed and burnt out from writing massive amounts of papers, I had a lot of time and energy to work on Stegosaurus Rex. During those few bleak months, I was employed part-time as a contractor for Ask.com, which brought in just enough money to cover rent, and a small bit of food. At the end of every month, I had very little money to spend or save. Trying to promote Steg Rex was stressful because I had no capital, no room for error. If I didn't judiciously budget every dollar I spent on Steg Rex, that would mean I lost that dollar, and that meant that I would probably have to make a meal more meager.

I applied to full-time jobs left and right, often sending my resume to 10 sources a week. Less than 5 contacts actually got back to me in those past 6 months.

I was losing hope, because I definitely wanted to eat better, and I wanted some more money to spend on Steg Rex.

Come late April, an opportunity fell into my lap unexpectedly. My friend Diane Velasco sent me an email one day about Yahoo; they were hiring some contractors who could work full-time.

I jumped right on it immediately. This could be the big break in the job market that I had been looking for all those 5 months!

Diane's boyfriend and my good buddy JC went through the interview process and got hired. I was pretty happy for him, and I was ready to join, too.

The interview process for me was riddled with hiccups. Someone lost my emails, someone else misspelled my email address, there were lapses in communication...

In short, I had no clue if I would be hired.

Last week, I got an email telling me to meet at Sunnyvale to take care of business on Tuesday, May 27th.

My heart skipped a beat. Could I have finally made it?

---

The past two days working at Yahoo have been tiring. Training is tedious and the coffee doesn't hold as well as I would like it to.

But it has been fucking worth it. I'll now make enough to cover more than just rent and food.

I can go ahead and further fund Stegosaurus Rex. Let's hope that I can take both my career and my music as far as I can go.

Once again, thank you, JC. Thank you, Diane.

--Steg Rex