I N T H E N I G H T K I T C H E N 2.3.2001
Great date today -- 02.03.01. All these zeros are kind of confusing me, though. Got my check in the mail and deposited. Also got a check from Albatross yesterday. When it rains, it pours. T. and I had a lengthy discussion about how to handle these gaps in funds. I think for the short term, it'll mean hunting down a low-interest credit card that pays the regular bills and gets paid off in full with each check I receive. Not a very fun way of looking at it but it's better than paying late fees. Money can be such a pain in the ass. I'll be going to talk to an accountant on Monday. Scary. Hopefully, I won't need more than one meeting with him since he costs $125/hour! I just paid all our current bills online. T. calls me right afterward to tell me that the debit card was rejected for his haircut. Obviously, the check hasn't gone through. Eep. C'mon, bank! 2.1.2001
Now again we'll be funky Things are looking up. I'm actually in a good enough mood to get my groove on listening to Fat Boy Slim. It's either the overnighted check on its way to me, the fact that I think I've beaten the Albatross into a form of submission, or the half-finished Toblerone by my side -- take your pick. [written last night] 1.31.2001
Apocalypse Yesterday turned out to be even more trying as it wore on. I ended up billing 8 hours to the Albatross. That's 8 solid hours. I was at my computer for 10. It is just so wretched. I had to call Laurie in the afternoon because I felt so out of human contact that I was beginning to worry that I had missed the Apocalypse and was the only one left on the earth and yet... I was still working, working, working. Thank Gods she answered her phone. I have not yet received a check from Good Client. I have sent a note to Client and will call to follow-up tomorrow. Remind me to put a "late fee" clause in my next contract. + + + I wrote the above actually last night. This morning's update is that I had a very unsatisfying exchange with Good Client in which he told me that he was still waiting to get my invoice. I then forwarded him the email in which the invoice was attached from the 18th. He then responded that there had been a mix-up in accounting and that my check would go out today. Okay. [Deep breath.] This has still caused a lot of problems. One of which is that I am committed to the Albatross for the rest of the week. The second of which is that we have to pay our rent now and we have to pay some other bills that will kick our ass if we don't. I'm going to contact Albatross and see if they are sending me a check for the last invoice any time soon. If they do that, we can pay off the rest of our bills for the month and be back on our feet... as long as Good Client does indeed send the check. Things that I have learned: Invoice about a week or two before the due date. Put a late fee stipulation in the contract. Put a kill fee stipulation in the contract and/or specify outstanding balances. Snail mail copies of invoices after emailing them. Double check after sending an invoice that they have received it. Write down the date that they admitted to having received it. The glamorous life of a freelancer. 1.30.2001
Overwhelmed I have no money right now. We have no money right now. Last night there was a somewhat lengthy talk about our bills, why we haven't paid them and how we're going to cut them down. For all the years we've been together, we've never figured out a solid way to manage our money. I had high hopes that we wouldn't have so many bills now in our life but... well, it has a way of happening, doesn't it? T. wants me to keep doing what I'm doing but I'm having a strong need (also known as panic) to find a full-time job. The thing is, it's not as though the money isn't coming in -- it is. It's just not physically here yet. I don't know where it is. It was supposed to be here a week ago. This is the worst part of freelancing. Good Client and I are in passive-aggressive business mode. I can only assume that he knows I don't have a check and that's why he's not contacting me. I let him know that I could not buy the assets we need to proceed without a check. If there is no check in the mailbox today, I'll need to give him a call or send an email and see what's up. I've pretty much stopped work entirely until I see the money. Hate this! I have another invoice out. I hope they are better about paying me in a timely manner then they were last time. Last December they were about two weeks late and I had to go pick up my check. No big deal about picking up the check but they kept insisting that they could just pop it in the mail. "No," I told them, "I will come and pick it up at your office at 10 a.m. tomorrow." Sheesh. This is just stressing me out... another topic, methinks. + + + Yesterday, I went over to Creative Assets and signed up with them. I was with them a couple years ago when I first got to Portland. They still had me in their files so we just sort of sat around and industry-gossiped and talked about what was and wasn't available. It was pretty interesting but I don't know what they can get me. I've been loathe to sign up with a staffing agency. You lose so much control over your life and your projects. However, some companies only do work with staffing agencies. Companies like Nike. But, in my conversation with CA, it wasn't apparent that they had very many contacts at Nike these days. I think I'll just let this one stew for awhile and not think about it. + + + Things on my professional 'to do' list:
Today, however, I have a solid block of working hours ahead of me. I need to get this project (Code name: Albatross) off my plate. 1.28.2001
War is not the Answer "Please understand that I have felt that fury, a fury made even more powerful by my own powerlessness, a fury that I have to eat, a fury that won't make anything better for me unless I use it to defend myself, which I might not do successfully, which just feeds the fury until it tickles the back of my throat. Good girls do not daydream about planting a size-nine go-go boot in a man's solar plexus, but good girls get raped and beaten up all the time. So do bad girls. It just isn't fair." - War is not the Answer 
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