Spring whirlwinds and windfalls
Mar. 21st, 2006 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chelidonI've been wanting to write up what's really going on around here, but there's just too much. I make notes in dribs and drabs as I have a few minutes, saving it off for later...
But in the meantime, Spring has come in with a wild rush of passionate frenzy, with the stereotypical massive cleaning activity -- all the more frightening in my case because of the relative rarity of the cleaning bug. I haven't seen the top of my desk in...well, a long time. Rule #1: Lose all vestiges of sentimentality. Be ruthless. Start cleaning, sorting, and above all, tossing many, many things into the recycle and burn piles, particularly timely now, since I will soon be moving my entire office down to the new room. Every day the house addition looks better, a little more complete -- at the moment I'm putting up and staining 240 square feet of knotty pine 1" x 10" shiplap on the back wall (against the old portion of the house), getting ready to install the oak flooring, shopping for stained glass (peacocks, natch), checking out some beautiful paganish Celtic ceramic tiles (*drool*), and getting the three blueboard walls ready for the mudders to come in and do the plaster work (just a traditionalist, I am, I want plaster and wood, not drywall and fiberboard). Somewhere along the line, I'll post pictures... And one of the stained glass panels just arrived while I wrote this entry, broken (phllbbbt!), and another was completely the wrong item (sorry, guys, a hammock is going to look awfully funny sitting in a window... grrr).
So anyhow, cleanliness may not be next to divinity (my attitude has always been, "if a tidy desk means a tidy mind, what does an empty desk mean?"), but it sure can be lucrative. Going back and gathering all the paperwork and preparing to do my 2005 business taxes, it looks like I may have been shorted last year for some of my recurring freelance gigs. Like, a lot -- as much as $20K. Yikes! There was so much going on work-wise in late 2005, so many chaotic changes and shifts and a mess of different assignments one right on top of the other, I didn't pick up on it until going back into all of the records now and double-checking all of the 1099s against my recorded income. Not nice to have been shorted, but really really good to have discovered it now, particularly because my partner may have to be out of work for a bit while recovering over the next couple of months. I've cleared up about half of that total today with the responsible parties ("So...do yous want to pay up now, or should I have my associate Guido come over and...explain it to you?") I'll tackle the rest tomorrow. A nice Spring blessing, to be sure. And a reminder to be more on top of the "accounts receivable" portion of the self-employment biz. In all cases here it wasn't intentional on anyone's part, but much like the entire insurance industry, the more they can weasel out of paying, the more profit they make, so sometimes you have to push a little...
And if the writing biz ever dries up, I have other options... ;> I was talking the other day to the fellow who runs the local flooring store I bought my oak flooring from. He was showing me the new shop space he and his wife are moving into this month, and mentioned that he has way more business than he has time to do (a common problem with all of the trades out here these days -- plumbing, electrical, etc). He asked me if I wanted to come install floors with him. In my copious spare time, no doubt... Problem is, I'm too much of a perfectionist to be in the trades for money. That's fine on my own house and land, but I'd take way too much time on jobs for people to want to pay for it hourly... Being a successful tradeperson means more than skill, it means knowing where to cut corners, how to get to "good enough" (i.e., a reasonable professional job) in the least amount of time. Hmm, come to think of it, freelance writing works much the same way, which may explain why I still end up "polishing the jewel" far too often for my editor's taste and blood pressure...
Okay, enough jawing -- time for me to screw my courage to the sticking place and get back to cleaning (eek!). Given all that's going on, the house needs to be a place of beauty and harmony, as much as possible. And if I get a spare moment and need to chop something into bits, perhaps I'll play with the new 28V cordless reciprocating saw that just came in (late birthday present to me). Cordless tools are nice, and will come in real handy when working on that 4-season treehouse...
But in the meantime, Spring has come in with a wild rush of passionate frenzy, with the stereotypical massive cleaning activity -- all the more frightening in my case because of the relative rarity of the cleaning bug. I haven't seen the top of my desk in...well, a long time. Rule #1: Lose all vestiges of sentimentality. Be ruthless. Start cleaning, sorting, and above all, tossing many, many things into the recycle and burn piles, particularly timely now, since I will soon be moving my entire office down to the new room. Every day the house addition looks better, a little more complete -- at the moment I'm putting up and staining 240 square feet of knotty pine 1" x 10" shiplap on the back wall (against the old portion of the house), getting ready to install the oak flooring, shopping for stained glass (peacocks, natch), checking out some beautiful paganish Celtic ceramic tiles (*drool*), and getting the three blueboard walls ready for the mudders to come in and do the plaster work (just a traditionalist, I am, I want plaster and wood, not drywall and fiberboard). Somewhere along the line, I'll post pictures... And one of the stained glass panels just arrived while I wrote this entry, broken (phllbbbt!), and another was completely the wrong item (sorry, guys, a hammock is going to look awfully funny sitting in a window... grrr).
So anyhow, cleanliness may not be next to divinity (my attitude has always been, "if a tidy desk means a tidy mind, what does an empty desk mean?"), but it sure can be lucrative. Going back and gathering all the paperwork and preparing to do my 2005 business taxes, it looks like I may have been shorted last year for some of my recurring freelance gigs. Like, a lot -- as much as $20K. Yikes! There was so much going on work-wise in late 2005, so many chaotic changes and shifts and a mess of different assignments one right on top of the other, I didn't pick up on it until going back into all of the records now and double-checking all of the 1099s against my recorded income. Not nice to have been shorted, but really really good to have discovered it now, particularly because my partner may have to be out of work for a bit while recovering over the next couple of months. I've cleared up about half of that total today with the responsible parties ("So...do yous want to pay up now, or should I have my associate Guido come over and...explain it to you?") I'll tackle the rest tomorrow. A nice Spring blessing, to be sure. And a reminder to be more on top of the "accounts receivable" portion of the self-employment biz. In all cases here it wasn't intentional on anyone's part, but much like the entire insurance industry, the more they can weasel out of paying, the more profit they make, so sometimes you have to push a little...
And if the writing biz ever dries up, I have other options... ;> I was talking the other day to the fellow who runs the local flooring store I bought my oak flooring from. He was showing me the new shop space he and his wife are moving into this month, and mentioned that he has way more business than he has time to do (a common problem with all of the trades out here these days -- plumbing, electrical, etc). He asked me if I wanted to come install floors with him. In my copious spare time, no doubt... Problem is, I'm too much of a perfectionist to be in the trades for money. That's fine on my own house and land, but I'd take way too much time on jobs for people to want to pay for it hourly... Being a successful tradeperson means more than skill, it means knowing where to cut corners, how to get to "good enough" (i.e., a reasonable professional job) in the least amount of time. Hmm, come to think of it, freelance writing works much the same way, which may explain why I still end up "polishing the jewel" far too often for my editor's taste and blood pressure...
Okay, enough jawing -- time for me to screw my courage to the sticking place and get back to cleaning (eek!). Given all that's going on, the house needs to be a place of beauty and harmony, as much as possible. And if I get a spare moment and need to chop something into bits, perhaps I'll play with the new 28V cordless reciprocating saw that just came in (late birthday present to me). Cordless tools are nice, and will come in real handy when working on that 4-season treehouse...
