Let’s take one more look back on 2007 and see what posts on this blog were tops, ‘kay? And instead of my rattling off a list of my ten most favorite whinings, I’m letting you do the talking. Literally. Your posted comments have determined the Top Ten posts of 2007. I’m talking about the sheer…
New Year, New You?
Let’s be honest; we somehow equate the beginning of each year with the chance to reinvent ourselves. And we do – for about a month. All our good intentions become crammed into the first week of the new year. Some are reasonable goals, such as contacting X number of potential clients per week. Others are…
Labor of Love
We have this project going in the bedroom – we’ve chosen an arts-and-crafts stencil and now we want to put a Swedish poem on the wall as a border. See, his godfather was the Poet Laureate of Sweden – Bertil Malmberg – and I thought it would be a fitting addition to our Swedish bedroom…
Delicious Dilemmas
Isn’t it great to be faced with choosing between jobs? It’s great in that you suddenly feel financial security creeping back into your life. It’s not so great when you’re really facing it and hoping you don’t choose unwisely. I have an interview next week with a major pharmaceutical. It’s a contract job, one year…
Land of the Free?
Over on Deb Ng’s blog there’s a bit of a discussion going regarding the old free-or-next-to-free payment issue. As you know by now if you’ve been around listening to me whine incessantly about it, working for free is never cool. Well, one exception – working for your mother. You wouldn’t charge your mother, although most…
A Better Way to Set Goals
Good chum Devon Ellington reminded me yesterday of her terrific goal-setting, soul-searching exercise. I wanted to mention it here, so please, do yourself a great favor and visit her site. It’s a wonderful exercise in how to identify our selves as well as our goals.
The Goal is What Exactly?
Good lord, it’s slow around here! I’m sitting for eight hours or more with absolutely no work coming in save for yesterday’s ongoing routine. And thank God for it – it will be the first check I receive in 2008 and it will make this lean time a lot less lean. So what am I…
Reinventing the Writing Career
Let’s continue our thought from yesterday. We’ve determined our ultimate goals and we’re now fairly certain of what it is we must make annually in order to pay the bills, feed the family and put aside money for retirement, college expenses for the kids, savings, and that nest egg for your shore house down payment…
What Are You Worth?
Like it or not, we are in the midst of a writing industry crisis. You don’t see it, you say? Sure you do – you just don’t recognize it. It’s in the low-paying jobs that have become more standard than those that pay you what you’re worth. And you feed into it every time you…
Unexpected Roadblocks
Okay, this one’s weird. For the last few months, I’ve felt absolutely drained of energy. I attributed it to working a lot, and to my physical therapy schedule (three months to repair a sprained rotator cuff). But then the PT ended and the work slowed. And the lethargy continued. Huh? Menopause? PMS? Depression? What? None…