Writing Your Internal How To Books - #1

Last week was just one of those weeks!

You know the ones, where things start out bad and then head for worse. The week before had ended by finding out all the mistakes I made in one (count ‘em) one article. Eh, not really a biggy … these blog posts are done in a hurry (in case you haven’t noticed) and they don’t get edited (usually) so they’re bound to have a few errors. But ddddumbbbbb muckups bug me. After all these are just short articles … just how many mistakes can I make in 400 – 600 words after all? Answer … LOTS!

So I guess I set myself up by demanding error-free results of myself!

And I’m not about to add time by doing an edit to these posts. So I have to lower my expectations of myself. Not something I like doing! (Can ya guess?)

Then I broke my glasses. Doing nothing. Just sitting there and they went pop! The frame finally gave up the ghost.

Needless to say I did not need that to happen. Now, I’m a little old. Actually, I’m getting a lot old. And my poor eyes are beginning to not know if they should be near-sighted (always were) or far-sighted (ahh age — isn’t it wonderful?). So they’re both. (Hey, I’m normally confused. Why shouldn’t my eyes be as well?) In short, I need bifocals — expensive bifocals. Expensive as in I don’t have the money for them bifocals. (Now remember this is Monday … and still going downhill!)

Next off, I started off the week ending one series without having an idea for my next series. No big deal. Happens whenever I end a series in the middle of a week. I usually need a day or so to come up with the next series. And by Wednesday, I had an article — after all it was Rememberance Day and most of my uncles were in the war. So by noon, I had an article laid out in my mind. Just one but hey, I can come up with a single no prob.

Unfortunately, it was like 5:00 by the time I was able to get working on anything to do with the business. B&*^@#%! Okay, no big problem. A day late won’t make THAT much difference — although doing it on Wednesday made more sense.

On Thursday … I got too b*^&^%%&% busy! Again!

Doing what? Taking phone calls from headhunters who really, really wanted to tell me about this great job possibility they had. Okay. I can deal with that. Money is money. I really don’t mind helping them do their job — especially if it is going to bring me work. Unfortunately, one of those was the type I ABSOLUTELY HATE. This was a guy who barely spoke English, who proceeded to describe this great job in some city in Canada called “Saskacheywan” (actually in Regina, Saskatchewan). Now, I have to admit it was the type of work I do and yes, I have experience doing exactly that type of work. However, 1 hour later I’m killing myself laughing at him. When I asked the rate they were looking for the response was $35/hour all in. Given that the daily allowance by the government is roughly $25/hr that wasn’t what I would call a realistic rate. Especially given that the area is still paying boom time rates and a normal rate for that type of work is just a leeeetle bit more than that. Normally, I try to turn recruiters down professionally … there are exceptions however! (FYI, that’s offering $35,000/yr for a $70,000/yr job … not counting relocation expenses or boom times). Oh, and to make matters worse — the job was first advertised six months ago!

Oh, yes, and the others who spent a great deal of my time (not wasted just spent), all had jobs that paid less than normal (around 2/3′s). At least they were local and somewhat in the ballpark given the market.

I also spent the rest of the day working with a client (fixed lowball price to boot) who actually hadn’t done what they thought they had done. So I ended up having to create a form so they would at least be able to do the work properly and then sent them back to do it all over again! Can I charge for that? Of course, not. So much for making my costs back!

By Friday, I should have gotten use to the way my week was going. But of course, I didn’t.

In fact, I made the mistake of reviewing the week. After all, that’s one of those things I do. It helps to get things done and focus on achievements.

Except this time.

I got nothing done last week. Absolutely NOTHING! Even my one blog post was actually written the week before — mostly!

Then to make it into just a wonderful week … I got ripped off. Yup. My car was broken into in my driveway sometime Friday night. I figure it was teenagers but still they stole a brand-new GPS that I bought with money I don’t have. And worse — I have to replace it because I’m travelling to Ottawa for stage 2 of the clean up of my father-in-law’s apartment.

However, today — as I was writing this rant — I realized that I did accomplish one thing. I learned something! And Wednesday I’ll share it with you on my next blog post.