Sprat, mackerel and other fish to fry
Every December, my work tends to tail off into the black hole of Santa's arse. Every January, I somehow assume this hiatus will continue, and I'm taken by surprise that it's consistently one of my busiest months. But boy, February this year is gonna be 'fun'.
Owing to the 'economic climate crunch' or whatever it's called, I have lost two clients recently. One involved designing showguides for property exhibitions - the administrators have just moved in. The other entailed writing various bits of frippery for a website which three of my LJ friends also wrote for. In this case, the consultants have moved in and realised that all this cheery content doesn't actually bring any revenue. So it goes.
Fortunately, I now have three new clients. One bizarrely is a London psychotherapy firm for which I initially offered to do a small job for free; one is a chain of London children's nurseries, which needs a new web dude, and for which I was kindly recommended. One is a large national membership organisation which publishes four magazines - I'm part of a small team which has stolen the work from the previous providers (a complicated saga in itself).
This is all good news, really - but sod's law dictates that everything happens at once. We have to hit the ground running with the latter and get a magazine out in the next three weeks - a time-frame in which I already have two other magazines and the flappy monster of the fringe brochure to design and get to press, along with a feature about DNA testing, several news articles and various website management tasks to undertake. This evening I now learn that my co-designer on the new big magazine thing has just lost his hard drive so can't do anything (he too is very busy) - so muggins here will do the whole first mag. Somehow.
I'm spewing all this out just to get my head round it, really - think of it as a very inefficient to-do list. I'm also very tired with baby-related sleeplessness. But hey, all this work does at least mean we can continue to survive while Helen's on maternity.
But if only people's deadlines didn't all collide like this every time!
Owing to the 'economic climate crunch' or whatever it's called, I have lost two clients recently. One involved designing showguides for property exhibitions - the administrators have just moved in. The other entailed writing various bits of frippery for a website which three of my LJ friends also wrote for. In this case, the consultants have moved in and realised that all this cheery content doesn't actually bring any revenue. So it goes.
Fortunately, I now have three new clients. One bizarrely is a London psychotherapy firm for which I initially offered to do a small job for free; one is a chain of London children's nurseries, which needs a new web dude, and for which I was kindly recommended. One is a large national membership organisation which publishes four magazines - I'm part of a small team which has stolen the work from the previous providers (a complicated saga in itself).
This is all good news, really - but sod's law dictates that everything happens at once. We have to hit the ground running with the latter and get a magazine out in the next three weeks - a time-frame in which I already have two other magazines and the flappy monster of the fringe brochure to design and get to press, along with a feature about DNA testing, several news articles and various website management tasks to undertake. This evening I now learn that my co-designer on the new big magazine thing has just lost his hard drive so can't do anything (he too is very busy) - so muggins here will do the whole first mag. Somehow.
I'm spewing all this out just to get my head round it, really - think of it as a very inefficient to-do list. I'm also very tired with baby-related sleeplessness. But hey, all this work does at least mean we can continue to survive while Helen's on maternity.
But if only people's deadlines didn't all collide like this every time!