I am having that feeling of "what if no one ever hires me again". I hate that. I swear it has more to do with me than the actual work, but it still feels scary.

I am having that feeling of "what if no one ever hires me again". I hate that. I swear it has more to do with me than the actual work, but it still feels scary.

I'm going through that now because I've hit my first dry period. I know this time is very slow in publishing, but I hate this feeling. I suppose it's good in that it's forcing me to start working leads that I've been lazy about, but, ugh.

On the upside, I'm happy to report that, with my 2012 taxes now finalized & paid, in my first 4 months of freelancing from Sept to Dec, I ended up clearing my regular monthly living expenses (which, as a singleton in SF, are fairly high). Not enough to also save for vacation, IRAs, etc., but still, I'm relatively pleased that my emergency fund remains intact.

Of course, since it’s been slow, I will probably need to dip into that soon. Yet, despite feeling slightly panicky about that, the psychic wages for quitting my previous crazy job remain high. I do not regret that decision in the least.

Thanks to everyone for the encouragement and tips here! They are very helpful and appreciated by this (mostly) lurker.

Pix and I have been working on the 2012 taxes. It's always a huge slog to make sure that we've gotten everything squared away correctly. I'm exhausted and there is still so much that needs to be done before my Noon meeting with the accountant on Wednesday.

I've hit my first dry period.

February. The month that freelancers hate.

with my 2012 taxes now finalized & paid, in my first 4 months of freelancing from Sept to Dec, I ended up clearing my regular monthly living expenses (which, as a singleton in SF, are fairly high).

This is great news! Huge congratulations on making such a good start.

February. The month that freelancers hate.

(shudder) it's true.

Pix and I have been working on the 2012 taxes. It's always a huge slog to make sure that we've gotten everything squared away correctly. I'm exhausted and there is still so much that needs to be done before my Noon meeting with the accountant on Wednesday.

Even though she was pricey, I'm very glad I got a good recommendation for an accountant from a fellow freelancer. Such a load off my mind, and now I can approach this year with a more critical and organized eye.

February. The month that freelancers hate.

Well, that's comforting I guess. I know there are projects waiting for me in March, so I'm trying to focus on enjoying my free time now. At least it makes the Oscar blitz a lot easier!

megan, I didn't know you were freelancing! I thought you took another job after leaving the crazy-bad one!

I'm glad it's going so well. My thing has always been to cultivate as many regular clients as possible and deliver good stuff on time, and keep them coming back. Which, you know, is easier said than done.

Well, almost all my work in the fall came from my previous employer (the publisher, not the crazy one). They never replaced me and have to freelance much of the French/Italian stuff anyway now, so between that and them passing the word, I had all I wanted. Frankly, after working 12-hour+ days for much of the summer, I was happy to take it a bit easy.

Oddly enough, my former boss is much easier to work with on this basis. But I know I don't want to be relying on one client, even if it's different areas of the company. The fall was sort of a trial run, but now I need to make this support me long term.

I finished my thing due today! I have four hours left! Whoot!

Man, I gotta get my shit together. I can't be pulling this stuff much longer. It wouldn't have been so bad without the computer crash in the middle of it, but it's my own fault for leaving it so late.

There was a discussion a while back about tracking business expenses and come curiosity about the Neat Desktop system.

I've owned one for a few years and tried it for a bit and then didn't use it. There were some issues with the Mac software. I used it as a standard scanner and it worked great. When I redid all the software on my iMac last week I noticed that the Neat software had been updated to version 4, so I decided to give it a try and it looks like I've gotten a decent workflow going. Since folks were interested I thought I'd lay it out.

The Neat software now includes a mobile app for iOS and Android as part of a cloud service and some other things. This is what is making it work for us. I can scan receipts as I get them, then add the business expense category that matches what K tracks in Quicken, which is where we keep all of our books. I can also scan receipts immediately with my phone. K and log into the web interface and see a report of receipts which she can then use to make sure that she has the correct categories assigned.

In the long run we'll be able to shred all of the receipts and just keep the digital copies, but I want to give it a month or two before we go that far.