Update
Old part-time job is finished except for a possible one-day handover later in the month. New part-time job is many, many less hours, at least until the second half of the year, plus their office is still shut due to storm damage, so I can't go in until after Easter or even do any work from home since something has gone horribly wrong with their accounting system on my laptop.
This means I suddenly have a lot more time and a lot less income and I have to come to grips with how to manage that, particularly as I also have a lot of travel coming up. Hence, no Swancon for me. (Though I'll probably be in the city late afternoon/evening Saturday, if anybody wants to meet for dinner.) I have some home maintenance and organisation projects to tackle, but nothing that seems very compelling, and they aren't enough to shake the slightly guilty/nervous feeling that I should be earning an income in most of my daylight hours. I'm not sure what the future shape of my work life will be, but it's pretty clear that it had better not require a reference from Old Job!
I'm also watching Angel and reading Robin Hobb's Farseer series, but doing those things during the day only adds to the guilty feeling!
On the plus side, I enjoy my horse work a lot more when it's the focal point of my day and not something I fit in on my way to or from the city. However, my clients are so far-flung that I can't really justify the travel costs if I'm driving literally hundreds of kilometres without the added reason of a day's accounting work in town. The obvious solution there is to build up more of a local clientele, but this isn't the kind of area where people are keen to pay more than the minimum rate to have something done well as opposed to barely adequately. I say that having never attempted to do any advertising or marketing at all, so I could be wrong. I am very averse to the idea of advertising and need to get over this. I've comfortably relied on word of mouth since I started, but that's meant I get new clients in the same far-flung areas as my old ones. Now is not a great time to look for more work, though, since I'm going to be away so much over the next three months. I probably just need to relax and call it a semi-holiday and a chance to think about what I'd like to do next - but I know from experience that spending tons of time at home alone is not the path to positive life changes!
A pretty picture: the
"Tunnel of Fudge" cake my sister made me for my birthday.
This means I suddenly have a lot more time and a lot less income and I have to come to grips with how to manage that, particularly as I also have a lot of travel coming up. Hence, no Swancon for me. (Though I'll probably be in the city late afternoon/evening Saturday, if anybody wants to meet for dinner.) I have some home maintenance and organisation projects to tackle, but nothing that seems very compelling, and they aren't enough to shake the slightly guilty/nervous feeling that I should be earning an income in most of my daylight hours. I'm not sure what the future shape of my work life will be, but it's pretty clear that it had better not require a reference from Old Job!
I'm also watching Angel and reading Robin Hobb's Farseer series, but doing those things during the day only adds to the guilty feeling!
On the plus side, I enjoy my horse work a lot more when it's the focal point of my day and not something I fit in on my way to or from the city. However, my clients are so far-flung that I can't really justify the travel costs if I'm driving literally hundreds of kilometres without the added reason of a day's accounting work in town. The obvious solution there is to build up more of a local clientele, but this isn't the kind of area where people are keen to pay more than the minimum rate to have something done well as opposed to barely adequately. I say that having never attempted to do any advertising or marketing at all, so I could be wrong. I am very averse to the idea of advertising and need to get over this. I've comfortably relied on word of mouth since I started, but that's meant I get new clients in the same far-flung areas as my old ones. Now is not a great time to look for more work, though, since I'm going to be away so much over the next three months. I probably just need to relax and call it a semi-holiday and a chance to think about what I'd like to do next - but I know from experience that spending tons of time at home alone is not the path to positive life changes!
A pretty picture: the
"Tunnel of Fudge" cake my sister made me for my birthday.