Give me some work
To say that the days are quiet is almost a euphemism. Maybe I shouldn’t talk about these things since potential customers could read this post after checking my portfolio. I have trouble lying, acting like I’m lying. Our lives are so easily buried in conventions that, like a roof over the house, protect us, reassure us and put us to sleep too.
I have nothing against rooftops, nor the food you have to earn from the sweat of your brow. Quite the opposite. I am a hard worker, stubborn problem solver. I have never lacked work, had loyal customers and I gave it back to them well. My competence is not to be challenged. However, that doesn’t give me much to put under my fingers. Even the keyboard falls asleep.
What’s going on? A combination of circumstances helped by the Harper philosophy. Projects are rare, small. A self-employed worker can satisfy a few clients at a time before he or she is pushed to exhaustion. However, if these customers no longer have any projects for you, you must either change your nest or go in search of new sources. After nearly twenty years of working at home, it may be time to move on.
This is easier said than done. Job opportunities are now gathered in large search engines. You submit your application among the many others, create links on LinkedIn, on Facebook, make friends with strangers, look good, redesign your website, sometimes do rare interviews, continue to serve your current clients and see accounts, tax reprimands or regular administrative announcements arrive. A rise here, a rise there. It uses up the patience that I have a little short for these things. Have I become a bear? I feel a little bit like a cicada who will have sung a little too long financially. With my head in the clouds, I didn’t worry too much about my fragile financial foundations.
I also do a lot of cleaning, try to look a little more like myself, to remain optimistic despite the red warning lights. I look at my birth chart. Uranus in the middle of heaven. For the past year, it has been announcing the changes. This is a good thing, it represents this new visibility that will be acquired with the publication of Les Mailles sanguines. There is also Pluto square in the same Middle of Heaven. Tectonic forces at work. I believe in astrology? No, I observe the universe and I’m good enough to wrap myself in synchronicity and metadata. And then I grab on to what I can.
Things change, the ice is moving. I’m trying to get my life in order. It may be, as a kind (and faithful) collaborator said, that it is only a bad passage, that business will resume. I also believe so, just as I know that a small boat on a turbulent ocean could still be big, that it could sink before the lull occurs.
Yes, I’m worried. My paternal grandmother was a chronically anxious woman. That didn’t stop her from living 100 years, two months and two days. But it will not erase the moving reality of having fun with my approach.
On the positive side, I’m moving forward with the house. It’s a mess here, in the big room. I removed the remaining plaster, made about twenty bags. I certainly don’t have the money to finish the work, but I can still demolish walls. The boat will at least be clean and we can see once again a metaphor. I can only be happy with what I control. The rest, we’ll see. We have no choice but to be Zen, to move forward.
I suddenly have a taste for the countryside, willing to grow vegetables around a cottage, to take the time to turn the land over, fatten it up, sow it. It is not done by shouting with scissors or trying to hold your breath until you have crossed the Atlantic.
It’s 11:23. A customer confirms to me that I can change the title from "4.5.5.5.1" to "4.5.5". I will be paid in two months when the work is done. Sometimes hours are long.
