Thanks for the marketing conversation earlier this week, Thread-mates.

I wish I had some major epiphany but I appreciate exploring the subject...and I got some lovely support via email! I always wanted to be supported in email.

The week has gotten better and I've received some wonderful feedback from Partner.

Two of her walkers are in breach of their contracts. They are being super blatant about it because they don't think that Partner will follow through. She's widely known as a softie.

One was SO disrespectful as to smile, wave and laugh as Partner shot photos of her with dogs she cannot, by law, walk. The nerve!

Weeellll. There is a new sheriff in town and injunctions are being filed and damages will be forthcoming. Our case is ironclad.

Tonight, I made a bunch of calls to clients who may be on the purloined list. The conversations all went really well and after reporting the results to Partner, she wrote back that she could never have made these calls and finds this function priceless.

My chest if puffed, I must say.

It really is easy for me...enjoyable even...so I'm glad to be doing it for her and the company.

Plus? One couple is planning a baby...sooooo...a potential client for me! Bonus all around.

Bonny, it sounds like you're metaphorically kicking ass and literally taking names. LOVE.

I missed the last monthly check-in, because I was all depresso-vision, and I am up early, so I decided to do a little self-check here.

Money continues to be tight, household-wise, but it continues to trickle in.

I landed 2 independent (non-B, non-friend) clients, one of whom is overdue in paying me, which is I'm sure a new and exciting Valuable Experience for me, BUT one I landed from participating in the International Freelancer's Day On-line Conference (I "saw" Amych there! HI!) and his company wants to test me out as a long-term freelance content writer, so I have a test gig set up, which is very exciting.

I worked on/am finishing up 2 manuscript critiques and edits, which is fun, yet terrifying.

I went to my first F2F local freelance networking gig, which went well. People were really intrigued by the name "Wordslinger."

Interesting note: I'd gotten all gussied up, pulled on a teacher, inteview-y dress, and it felt WRONG. I said "Fuck it" pulled on a houndstooth pencil skirt, an indigo tank with my favorite black and white owl shirt from Threadless over it, and slapped my hair up in a French twist and put some red lipstick on.

I stood out, but didn't look slutty OR frumpy; people wanted to meet me, I got laughs on and convos for my elevator speech, and people were asking me for my card and I had to follow-up LinkedIn requests the next morning. So that felt good.

I also won a kick-ass door prize -- a two day training seminar on website designing. SCORE.

I submitted a query to Bust magazine, and am playing the waiting game on that.

I need to tweak my website, and figure out what my newsletter this month is going to be. Also, need to do more marketing.

Erin, Bonny, you're both rocking!

And I'm so glad you got gigs from that conference - I got some good twitter network and some inspiration/focus on a day when I was feeling a bit like wet sludge, but nothing as tangible as that. Which is fine - it's not what I went looking for, but so rocks for you!

I was happy to see you there, and I met a local participant at that F2F networking thing I went to on Tuesday.

So that was cool!

Yay for Bonny and Erin!!

QUICK WORDING REVIEW REQUEST:

It's done!

You know, I'm mostly okay with being dyslexic, but sometimes I just don't know.

Thank GOD by friend was able to look at the text because I did not 'see' one of the questions correctly, after having read it at least 10 times.

She asked why the question was so abrupt. Was it tied to removed text or something on my website.

Nope. The interviewer just asked it out of the blue.

While I appreciate _wanting_ to go from ordinary to extraordinary, I'm not sure I could answer that in two sentences.

Heh.

Now to send it off. (I'm secretly thrilled to be featured on the website of the local mommy mob. The are some hardcore wymmins. No lie. It's great exposure for me.

Penguin wrangling?

Yup. I worked at Seaworld San Diego right when they opened the very first Penguin Encounter. I can still hear the theme music and smell the smell of a thousand deadly smells.

When March of the Penguins came out all I could say was "Just thank God it isn't in Smell-o-vision."

Plus? No. I'm all for dramatic effect and all, but Emperors simply do not have personalities. Trust me, there is nobody home in there. For reals.

Ha!

You guys!! I had to scroll back 225 messages to find last month's checkins! Because we rock! And I still can't post without exclamation points!

Anyway:

I wrapped up a project today, with happy clients, and a big feeling of YAY DONE. I like handoffs. I like them so much better than finishing up a period of contract work, or a maintenance/upgrade/tweaky jobbie, or whatever else, even if the pay and work were exactly the same. It's like, hey, we made this thing! Look at it all shiny and new!

So after that, I took a two-hour vacation. I mean really took a vacation: walked out of the client's office reeeeally slow on this absolutely gorgeous day, and got myself lunch (out! not at my desk!) and took the slow way home, totally in the moment the whole time, and took a little nap, and THEN got back to hitting refresh on a million different things.

I'm definitely one of those freelancers who does it for the lifestyle rather than doing it to make the big bucks. And I'm pretty good at refusing to let myself get into overcommitment and 16-hour workdays and all that -- I'd rather live leaner but saner, and anyway getting all macho over that stuff is for the birds 25-year-olds. But even so, I carry work with me. If I'm not being productive, I'm still thinking about it, whether it's some project or just angsting about how I'm not being more productive. If I'm on official vacation (as opposed to today's 2-hour kind), I always have the laptop and phone along with me. Y'all know the drill, I'm sure.

So, a bonus check-in question, if anyone wants one: What's your best micro-break, whether it's a few minutes or stealing an extra hour? Can you turn off the "I could be working" nag?

Financially, we're finishing the month fairly flush (well, for us, anyway), and I got my invoices out today. So that's good. I'm finally making my share of the load... although I also think I keep tabs on that way, way closer than S does. Had a slack time in the middle of the month which scared me, but we did a tough reset on our spending, and that evened things out a lot. Still working on the plan to get the reserves built up.

Looking ahead, I need to pick up projects, and soon. Slack times are bad for the soul. Or the anxiety. Or whatchamacallit. I have some better sources now for short-term gigs, and I'm planning to fill in between bigger projects with those, if I can get the balance sorted right.

Still learning so much with this business thing, and still so much to learn.