Dear loved family and friends,
2016 has been a very tough year for Alex and I. We went from being on such a high in 2015, with getting married and honeymoon, to burying ourselves into our businesses and the outcomes of that.
For me, trouble ended up following my pharmacy with the owners putting their inexperienced sister in charge and making me very uncomfortable, both professionally and personally. They then ended up reneging on their promise to partner with me and yet expected me to keep a below market salary. I quit soon after, knowing that with 7 years of experience, I no longer needed to keep a toxic job out of fear. I posted an ad to tutor pharmacy technicians in the certification exam and was randomly asked to interview for a supervising pharmacist position without having sent out a single resume. I had quit my position on a monday and by friday I had a new job. I have now worked at this pharmacy for months with no issues and no gap in employment. While the sting of what happened to my promised pharmacy still lingers, the pharmacy I work in now has been one of the most welcoming pharmacies I’ve ever experienced.
Alex had been working on his game, SpaceCats in Space, for the better part of a year full time. The endeavor ended up costing a lot of money, so Alex decided in order to continue, he would have to seek employment. He found it in a small company called Pinpoint, which deals with credit card fraud. They allowed him to work from home with a proper salary and equity. With his savings secured, Alex went full steam into getting the game ready to present on kickstarter, with the hopes it will get funded. From april until the end of july, it was non-stop conventions and marketing. We went from Baltimore (magfest), to Atlantic City (ACBC), to Boston (Pax East), to Pittsburgh (Anthrocon), to Seattle (Pax West) as well as attending indie game conventions here in NYC. It was exhausting. Luckily, we did have help, with Alex’s animation artist Rachel moving from Australia to New York to work in America and make the game with Alex. In August, we launched our kickstarter in the hopes that the attention we had received from the conventions made it all worth it. Unfortunately, it wasn’t and while we did end up getting $12,000 and some great recognition from a very famous Youtuber, the kickstarter failed and we canceled it after 2 weeks. That failure hit hard and it took months for Alex and I to emotionally recover from it, but we’ve finally decided in November to look into publishers and complete the game without funds.
To top all of this all off, we had to move at the beginning of October. In September, we received a letter asking us to vacate so that the landlords could move back into the property. We quickly mobilized and found a 2 bedroom apartment a block away from the place we had been living and we spent a full week going back and forth, moving everything we owned (we accumulated a lot over 4 years). Our animator, Rachel, who now worked at JP Morgan and looking to move anyways ended up moving in with us and the arrangement has worked out well.
While we were too busy this year to do any true vacationing, Alex and I spent a needed 3 day weekend in Disney world at the beginning of November, doing everything Star Wars and then some. We also have a trip to Belize planned for February and are very excited for that.
So friends, that is where we are. I for one am glad 2016 to be over and am looking forward to a more hopeful 2017.
Happy holidays!
Love,
Jenn Rabbin and Alex Lau
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