Yesterday I put on my IT costume (polo and khakis) and went down to the client’s office, where I was able to get quite a lot of her catalog copy done. Most of the previous day’s problems were fixed, as long as I didn’t try to get the machine to go any faster than one SKU every six minutes. I would like to do it much faster than that, but the program requires thinking time and likes to be refreshed after every “add” and stuff like that.

Since I was working so slowly, we had plenty of time to chat throughout, and I gave her advice on her planned video blog and her marketing ideas and stuff like that, as well as the kind of mere persiflage in which people working together often indulge. She got in tabbouleh salad and carrot cake for lunch, and we finished the day with a sense of a job well done.

While I was there, an associate of the client’s called, wanting my contact information for a spa in a town a couple of counties over. I was able not only to give her my phone number, but also to suggest nonchalantly that they should go to my website and put in their information so I could have a preliminary look at their website and determine their needs.

After work, I went to the gridiron show. My husband went with me, bless his heart. He even drove. It was a lot of fun. Kind of like a high school show, really, and therefore most fun if you knew the people being lambasted, but they took on some national figures as well. The final 2008 campaign extravaganza posed the dilemma thus:

“Young and green
Or old and mean,
We’ve got to choose between!”

I ran into a lot of friends whom I hadn’t seen in a while. I have to say that there were some who looked surprised to see me. It could just have been “Oh, I haven’t seen you in so long!” surprise. It could have been that I was nicely dressed in a wrap top #2 daughter helped me pick out on that memorable occasion when we went to the shopping center to practice my freeway driving, and had a recent haircut. These people have mostly seen me in jeans. It could have been that my weight gain is more noticeable than I think. It could have been that my husband was with me, an unusual occurrence at this kind of do.

It is also possible that I usually don’t go to these events and they think of me as a recluse. I’ll probably never know.

Today I’m singing the solo in “Send It On Down” in church and also at The Great Day of Singing up on Mt. S. I’m looking forward to it, though it requires sustained singing above a C, which is rough on the throat. I’m therefore going only to one church service.instead of the usual two.

It seems unlikely that I’ll make it to the grocery or the fabric store for #1 son’s shirt pattern. Maybe I’ll do housework this evening.

I’ve read several books lately that advise imagining a perfect day and then comparing your current life with that perfect imaginary day.

So I did.

There’s not that much difference, actually. Some of the differences are time management things. My perfect day could begin with a cup of tea and this journal, but it would then go on to a nice breakfast at the table by the window overlooking the garden, not a bowl of Raisin Bran eaten while working. In fact, the perfect day would involve getting to the gym and having a shower before beginning work.

There is nothing keeping me from doing that. I just have to do it.

Then the perfect workday would end not with me giving up because everyone has come home and started pestering me and making noise, but in my completing my task and finishing up before they arrive, and taking the dogs for a walk as a good transition to time off. Then I could talk with my family and prepare a wholesome meal before heading out to rehearsal.

This does mean working less. That is, having an eight-hour workday instead of an eleven-hour one. If that’s not enough, though, it would be better for me to finish up in the evening after rehearsal.

My perfect day takes place in a pleasant, tidy house. That means spending some time on housekeeping instead of working on Saturdays.My perfect day also includes healthy veggie-filled meals, not take-out pizza and ice cream.

All those things are about time. The worktime in my imaginary perfect day was the kind of day I really have: a couple of different interesting assignments, a meeting or class for human contact, a surprise of some kind to keep it exciting. Oh, and I had plenty of work on my calendar and a bit of money in the bank, so I didn’t let worry about finances cause me to work unreasonable extra amounts.

The other thing that was different about my perfect day was that my menfolks were interested in what I was doing. I was given tickets to a show tonight by one of my pro bono clients,  and my husband doesn’t want to go with me. My son said he’d go if I really wanted him to and I couldn’t find anyone else.  My daughter says I shouldn’t feel bad; married women always have trouble getting dates.

In my perfect day, my family hung out with me while I cooked dinner and we talked about how our days had been, and then had dinner together. In real life, that only happens when my daughters visit. Otherwise, the guys watch TV and play video games. And then four nights a week I’m out, #2 son works most evenings, my husband goes out with the guys on a couple of the evenings when I’m in, and we probably spend no more than half an hour a day in conversation. They have no idea what I do, and can’t really be expected to find any fascination in the saga of the grayhat linkbuilder in the Philippines or the failure of the MP3 site to improve following my ministrations. And they have the TV on most of the time. There was no TV in my perfect day.

Still, there are parts of the perfect day fantasy that I could use to motivate myself to improve the structure of my day. It’s not as though I haven’t thought of it before. I just have to do it.

As for today, I got up with my husband at 4:20, made his coffee, checked my email, sent him off to work, and went back to sleep. Now I need to have breakfast and do the grocery shopping before getting back to Client #3′s office.

Yesterday’s surprise was that the new site misbehaved. In fact, on her machine, it misbehaves every time you try to get it to go fast. So, instead of getting it all fixed up and ready yesterday afternoon once I got the all-clear to start putting in the content, I spent the afternoon doing things and redoing things and shutting down and restarting and hitting F5 and calling the webmaster and trying to look serene for the client, since The Computer Guy is the webmaster here. Usually, I feel that I can get a little testy with the webmaster in these situations, but in this case, I recommended him and am working with him on it, so the client’s increasing agitation required reassurance.

It also requires me to go down again this morning and spend the day there, essentially on a voluntary basis, since she’s a Dark Art Lite client and used up this month’s time days ago.

Still, my perfect imaginary day does involve a little surprise. I think I like a little bit of a crisis, even. It makes the day interesting. You can’t want surprises and then fuss when they turn out to be crises.

I guess my perfect day ought to involve a cleaning service that would come in and clean the house while I’m gone. Or a sudden change of heart among my menfolks that causes them to do it. Or maybe it should involve me enjoying a vigorous half hour of housework every day during my (imaginary) lunch break. That might be more realistic.

We did student midterm evaluations yesterday. I have to say here, since there is nowhere else in my life where I can say it, that I got really good evaluations from my students. My sons assured me that they were just sucking up.

After class, I went to Client #3′s place again to fight with her computer, or rather to work on her website. The Computer Guy was working on it from the other end. After a couple of hours, it wouldn’t cooperate with me. I called said Computer Guy, and he told me I had to get out of there because he really needed to get his stuff done.

I was the one working in the client’s place of business, of course, doing things she can understand. Overall, she took it pretty well. However, I agreed (after rehearsal last night) not to get back in until I get the all clear, so it is very likely that I will be working on it this weekend.

Since the site was supposed to be completed in September, has already been paid for, and needs to be working for her big annual conference in one week, the client is experiencing some stress. I told her about Client #4′s webmaster, whom I have been asking to install analytics at her catalog since July. Yesterday I asked him for the seventh or eight time and he responded by explaining that I needed to set up an account and send him the code — which I’ve done. I have in fact sent the code to him four times now. I did it again. This morning I still have no data.

Is it useful to the client to explain that she’s working with an industry in which being late is the norm and completely ignoring clients is quite common, so she’s actually getting unusually good service? Possibly not.

After being kicked out, I went to get a haircut. The hairdresser said to me, “My generation — I don’t know about your generation –” I was a bit surprised, since I thought she was just a few years older than I am. Nope. She is one year younger, but apparently identifies more with my son, whose hair she also cut, than with me.

Lots of work to do today, and possibly also tomorrow. TGIF!

I’ve been reading a book called Do You Matter? How Great Design Will Make People Love Your Company. The thesis of this book is that good design improves people lives.

The authors have fudged a little bit, perhaps, by redefining everything as a design issue. The way things not only look and function, but also the way they sound and feel, the attitude of a worker, the language used — all design.

But they make some interesting points. Starbucks, for example, was able to get people to spend way more on coffee than its competitors because it was special. The smell, the language they used, the feeling in the coffee shops, the machines they used, the barristas, all combined to create an experience that people were willing to pay for, and then they threw in some good coffee, too.

Now there’s a Starbucks on every corner, they’re not special any more, other places have copied and commoditized their experience, and Starbucks is suffering. This is a simple example, and many of the ones they give are much more complex, but once you read the book, you start to see it everywhere.

I spend a lot of time dealing with design issues, of course, for work. I tell people about the design problems at their websites. Then they either make the changes and see results or don’t make any changes and don’t see as much in the way of results.

My business website reminds people of chocolate (I mentioned this to The Computer Guy yesterday, foolishly imagining that he’d be as surprised as I was, but that was the plan) and then as my clients they get taken care of and often have a fairy godmother effect in their businesses, so if I follow the business advice of this book, I’d carefully craft every bit of the experience to reflect a pampering and luxurious feeling. Then my clients would not want to leave the luxurious chocolaty ambience of my services for someone else’s, even if they were cheaper.

Which, let’s face it, it rarely would be. Except at oDesk. I could try to figure out how to make that a more luxurious experience, but people don’t go to oDesk for luxury. They go for human beings as a commodity. Do You Matter? warns frequently about commoditizing. Once you become a commodity, anyone can replace you.

So today I’m going to teach my class and then go down and fix up a client’s website. Going to the client’s office to fix up her website is pretty luxe. It’s part of the whole “Don’t worry, I’m taking care of you” feeling that I offer clients. Possibly I should also take her some chocolate.

But is my Comp I class a commodity? It’s different from Freshman Comp classes I’ve taught before because I make the point that I’m a professional writer, that writing is a valuable skill in the world, that we’re turning out an excellent product. None of those ideas has been part of any basic writing class I’ve seen or taught before. But where’s the design in the experience? I have to think about that.

Or what about our homes? Designing them well, if the authors of this book are right, should mean the difference between constant nagging irritations and a smooth and joyful life.

I’m going to work on this.

Yesterday I had a couple of meetings, a bunch of blog posts, book reviews, the Wednesday evening marathon, and the grading of papers. Today I have class, time in the client’s workplace, and then a haircut for me and #1 son. Rehearsal tonight.

I did get to the gym and the grocery store yesterday. I dont know that either of those things has to do with design, but both are very good things.

The big famous SEO blog posted my essay. Trust me, you’re not going to find it interesting unless you are actually interested in SEO. But I am still flattered when they post my stuff.

In general, I’m past giving away my writing for the flattery of being posted, but that site is the exception.

I completed my hookworm rewrite (did I mention that it got sent back for being too disgusting?) yesterday, taught class, and sent out a couple of “I looked at your site and noticed that it’s not doing what you need it to; my marketing blog might be useful to you, and maybe you’d like to meet and talk about that” emails. I don’t know whether this will turn out to be a useful type of marketing or not, but it seemed worth trying.

I’ve come up with something better in the way of business goals, I think. The rest of #1 son’s tuition needs to be paid, and I would like to smooth out my work load a bit, instead of having a feast or famine (or at least, a feast or not quite a feast) situation. So I figure I need to double my regular contract work and get a good bunch of clients in the wings so that I won’t be waiting on oDesk or The Computer Guy to offer me stuff when I finish a job.

It’s good to have goals.

After class last night I came home and watched “Dan in Real Life,” which is quite heartwarming. My family has a good deal in common with the family shown there; I can imagine that in another ten or twenty years we’ll have gatherings like that (I’m imagining being the grandmother, you see), but of course without the extraneous drama.

Life is better without too many plot twists. A few, yes, but if there’s enough to keep the action going in a movie, then that’s too much for real life.

While I watched, I worked on this lace scarf. Lace doesn’t look like lace till it’s stretched out properly, so you can’t really see anything here. I need to decide soon whether to make the center of it plain or lace. At the moment, I’m inclined toward letting it be plain, with lace at the ends. Let me know if you have Views on this question.

The people in the movie played games and music together, and read and knitted and made stuff and went for walks and to the gym. This is what we do at our house, too. #2 son is back in gymnastics in spite of the need to pay his brother’s tuition. Both the boys play sports — things like basketball and Ultimate Frisbee — and go climbing.

But these are not all the interests there are in the world. The other night at rehearsal one of the tenors (he’s kind of a loud, braying tenor, but we have an excellent director so it’ll be okay in performance) went off into rhapsodies about birdwatching.

Now, when you sing in this kind of choir, you’re in rows. This guy couldn’t see our faces. So it isn’t all that horrible that most of us were laughing a bit as he went on and on about the opportunities for birdwatching in the place where we’re supposed to go on tour next spring.

Not horrible, maybe, but also not that reasonable. Why is birdwatching a humorously uncool hobby?

He wasn’t doing this little speech at the local rave, after all, or in a pool hall. We were all people who sing for fun. I know for a fact that there are several people in the group who are in book clubs. I play handbells, for heaven’s sake. Not for fun, it’s true, but I do it. Lots of the people there are old. There’s no reason to think that we were an especially hip and trendy group.

But birdwatching was somehow just so uncool that we thought it was funny.

I don’t know why that should be. We don’t laugh up our sleeves at people who go sailing or fishing. I was at a dinner party recently where there was quite a bit of conversation about the birds and animals in our back yards. None of the guests rolled their eyes.

Maybe it was the way he talked about it.

So today I have papers to grade, quite a bit of work for Client #4, Amazon reviews, and a meeting about the Advent and Christmas music, plus the usual Wednesday marathon. I must also get a walk in. Last night I said something about the upheaval in my life interfering with my daily life and The Innkeeper asked, “What upheaval?”  This reminded me that it has been nearly six months since I lost my job and I should get it together or at least quit using the fact as an excuse for having my life in a state of disorder.

Another goal.

La Bella brought me some more fabrics.

Possibly her entire stash.

When I go places with La Bella, I sometimes feel as though I’m the “before” picture and she’s the “after.” Not quite so badly now that I have taken up being better dressed at least some of the time. But still, there’s a real contrast.

She always looks good. She is always well-dressed and well-groomed. She wears accessories.

Naturally her fabric stash has good stuff in it.

More Pendleton wools, including yards more of the stuff I used to make that skirt which is still waiting for hemming. Obviously I have to make a jacket from it. I might never wear the two pieces together, since wearing a blue plaid suit could make me look eccentric, but I obviously have to do it.

There’s also a wonderful camel wool, and some green-blue blouse fabrics, and cottons and linens in nice bright colors, including a large quantity of coral. It could become a dress.

These fabrics might need to be for someone else. This season I’ve branched out from my usual gray to brown, but I’m not sure I could branch into coral.

Maybe for spring. La Bella is the sort of woman who looks completely natural in turquoise capri pants. I find the blue and gray plaid a bit loud.

In any case, I now have so much fabric that I am going to have to do some sewing. No question.

Yesterday I got the word that my perfect class schedule for next term — two days a week at 7:30 in my own county — has been changed to three days a week at 8:00. That means that I have to drive three days, during rush hour. It’s an extra hour our of my week, and of course no extra pay. Also I’ll have to dress properly three days a week instead of two. Plus Sunday, since I go to church.

I’m planning to look into the distance learning. I am enjoying my IRL class so much that I didn’t hesitate to accept one for next term, but I might want to switch after all if there’s all this driving and wearing of proper clothing.

Yes, I’m feeling a bit whiny again. How did you know?

I was all excited to see yesterday that I had 800+ links to my website. I ran my backlink analysis software, though, and I find that I have hundreds of no-follow links and a mere dozen real ones. Sigh. Also the dog wet on the carpet and in spite of baking soda the house smells evil. And … let’s see…

See, it’s somewhat frustrating to feel whiny and have no good stuff to complain about.

The new skirt has not been hemmed, because Blessing came over right after lunch and stayed all afternoon. This was nice of her. We spent a little time catching up on each other’s lives and a little time deciding what needed to be done with her website, and then she showed me how to use my accounting software. In exchange, I’ll fix up her website.

She used many interesting accounting terms, like “Wash it through,” and “receivables,” and now I think I can go back and put all the data into the program. So far, my newfound accounting skills have shown me that I made quite a bit less in September than I thought I did. I guess it doesn’t really matter, since September is over, but it makes me a little nervous. I’ve been thinking I was averaging my goal amount, and really I’m several hundred under that, and no Big Client on the horizon.

Oh, well. It was looking too easy, wasn’t it?

I sent a post to the big famous SEO blog. They’ve posted both the ones I sent them before, so it won’t be as thrilling if they do so again, but there is still a little bit of suspense. I also sent a proposal to the Small Business Development Office, suggesting that I should do a seminar for them. I have quite a lot on my calendar for today, but I hope to have time to do some marketing for myself.

Blessing was telling me about her new job, and we got into conversation about coworkers. She hasn’t had any for a while. I went down with the ship at the store, but she left and had been with a small company for about a year. She was alone in her office there, and really had no coworkers. She rarely even had contact with her boss. Now she’s in a cubicle, literally, in an office with forty other accountants.

I suggested that it was an opportunity to make friends. For many of us, work is the place where we make friends. This isn’t entirely a good thing, since you often have little choice of coworkers. But you spend the day with them, so there you are: they’re your friends.

Blessing wasn’t sure that these people would be her new friends. She’s working in a place where the accounting staff is referred to as the supervisor’s “girls.” All the departments seem to be like that: “Tom’s girls,” “Dick’s girls,” “Harry’s girls.” And the main job for many of the staff is to see how little work they can get away with. Naturally, then, they have lots of time for Poignant Human Drama.

Not Blessing’s idea of fun. Not mine, either. Fortunately, I have friends from church, choir, book club, and even leftover coworkers of the past, so my lack of coworkers doesn’t mean I’m lonely.

It doesn’t entirely exempt me from Poignant Human Drama, either. Mostly, but not entirely. I have had the drama with the IT guy from church, who still won’t speak to me, even though we sat there in church yesterday singing, “They’ll Know We Are Christians By Our Love.” I had the bit of drama with JK, who is my coworker across the seas. We’re going to work together this morning, virtually, and I have high hopes for that.

The Computer Guy is in some sense a coworker of mine. “It isn’t customary,” Blessing told me sternly, “to have the same people in your vendor and customer files.” But we are each other’s clients, and also have shared clients, and have done projects together, and of course I’d like him just to hire me, so I continue to think of him as a colleague.

With most of my clients, I feel as though we’re working together toward their goals. This results in a whole lot of unbillable time spent emailing back and forth, but it also gives the work a human dimension that makes it more enjoyable for me. I don’t think I can call them coworkers, though.

And while I might accurately think of the webmasters of my clients as coworkers, I don’t usually want to. These are the people who refuse to put in the Google Analytics code because they “don’t see how the page will validate with something between the <head> and the <body>” or take six months to change an address on a web page (I’m saying six months optimistically, because it hasn’t happened yet; I may have to send Kevin an anniversary card when it’s been a year since I asked him).

I might have coworkers at the college, but I never see them. I walk in, teach my class, and leave. They might be having parties and stuff all the time, for all I know.

Basically, I work by myself.

This has been true for a year and a half now, and I don’t mind it yet. Last year, though, I had the weekly meeting with The Empress, and I believe I was invited to the store’s Christmas party.

I gave Blessing all my kitchen show paperwork, since she is taking over my clients. I am going to do one final show this month, so if you need anything, let me know.

The skirt spent the night hanging, and I’ll get it hemmed today.

I was looking for a classic A-line bias-cut skirt with a center seam, like the one in the picture below, but I couldn’t find any patterns like that. The nice lady at the fabric store suggested Simplicity 4236, a circlular skirt. I eliminated the center seam and made it in two pieces rather than four, placing the fold on the true bias of the fabric. This made it possible for me to have a nice diagonal line at the center without worrying about matching seams. The side seams are fairly well matched; I basted and pinned and I’m happy with them.

The skirt itself is different from what I’d thought of. It’s a more youthful style. In fact, it sits 1″ below the natural waist, so that I’ll always feel a little as though my skirt is falling off. It’s a full, flippy skirt with a graceful drape, and I would recommend it. It’s designed to work with border prints, not to be cut on the bias, but it took bias placement pretty well, and I think I’ll enjoy wearing it.

It was exremely easy to make. This didn’t prevent me from making a variety of errors. The waist is finished with twill tape,and I sewed that onto the wrong side and had to take it all off and redo it. I carefully basted one side seam for the zipper, and then just as carefully sewed the zipper into the other side. So the pattern isn’t foolproof, but it is easy enough that it can be made by a fool with a little ripping out and redoing.

#1 son and I got his tuxedo rented. In fact, we got him on the musician plan, where he merely has to call a couple of weeks before his performances and they’ll kit him out without any further bother.

At $50 for everything counting shoes, it wasn’t too bad, but I’ll be haunting flea markets between now and his next concert.

The other issue that’s taking up my thoughts is that of JK, a young woman in the Phillippines who works for my Australian client. She’s supposed to be doing linkbuilding for them, and she’s doing a bad job. I don’t think she’s a blackhat. I think she just doesn’t know any better. After a lot of internal struggle, I told the client what was going on, and they’ve asked me to work with her. I have two hours a week to supervise her work and help her clean up her act. I’ve spent a couple of hours already off the clock working with her in emails back and forth. I’ve gone from abstract “You and I are both experts” emails about linkbuilding to “I’m afraid your articles aren’t doing what you want them to.” Actually, I’m afraid that I’m going to hurt her feelings and make her hate me.

This is a good opportunity for her. She can get training from an experienced linkbuilder and increase her value significantly. She has worked at oDesk for $3 an hour, and while the Aussies are paying her more than that, she could certainly raise her rates if she were better at her job. Is it worth it to her to have someone criticizing her? And how much does the fact that I’m an American who won’t work for less than my normal wholesale rate and she’s an offshore girl who works for way less going to affect the dynamic of our relationship? Maybe she’ll recognize that I’m older than she is and accept my suggestions on that basis instead of thinking of me as a condescending witch who’s trying to take food out of her mouth.

Any suggestions will be gratefully accepted.

Coming back to say that she responded very well and is up for some training. If this works out, I might be able to provide that basic linkbuilding at a better rate for my clients who need that. Maybe The Computer Guy will even add a box for her.

So here are my nicely-coordinated (though poorly photographed) fabrics. I can make a long bias-cut skirt from the plaid, a three-piece suit from the gray flannel, pants and a second jacket from the mushroom gabardine, blouses from the light and dark blue linens, and tops from the sky blue and burgundy knits.

This will make an excellent winter wardrobe in wool, with linen, and cotton tops. I have yarn in just these colors, too, and I can wear both Ivy (a gray vest I knitted in the spring) and a new sweater with colorwork which I might conceivably make to go with this lovely winter SWAP.

I even have enough of the gray flannel to make this elegant coat. And a taupe ultrasuede for a clutch to go with it when I am attending the opera and all that stuff that I rarely actually do.

There is an imaginary air to this plan, though, beyond imagining that I could make a coat or have sufficient occasions to wear it. I haven’t been sewing much, have I? The fact that I still have enough fabrics on hand to put together an entire SWAP says something about the likelihood of my getting this done. Not to mention the Christmas gifts that are supposed to be being made.

So I guess I may or may not actually do this, but it seems like a good plan. I have a blue corduroy jacket and a couple of neutral ones, as well as brown and gray trousers, all of which would work well with these fabrics. I could, if I were to follow this plan, go around till spring feeling well dressed.

After looking through all my skirt patterns, I decided that I really had to have a bias cut one with a center seam, so I plan to head out this morning and find one. Otherwise, I believe I have enough patterns, and I plan to spend the day sewing once I’ve done my errands. While buying the pattern, I can also pick up the remaining buttons for Erin and have it ready to wear when the weather turns cool.

In addition to buying a pattern and doing the grocery shopping, I also have to help #1 son find a tuxedo. We should have been watching flea markets ever since we learned he was going to be a music major. However, we didn’t do that, so now we have to rent one before the concert.

You know, if we were trying to live on my old salary, we’d be suffering. We’ve suffered before when we had kids in college, and we’d survive, but that little bit extra really helps.

I was up till 11:00 last night chatting with a coworker in the Phillippines (and how cool is that? except for the time zone issues, I like being part of the flat world), #2 daughter, and The Computer Guy who is off visiting his revolutionary hardware. Then I woke up way too early this morning because I had thought of an interesting way to start off a post at my marketing blog. So I guess I am still having to Work at Not Working. However, I did go to a very fun dinner party last night at Suwanda’s. I was at the table with Janalisa and her husband, BigSax, and the sweetest couple who had been married for 57 years, which was longer than most of us have been alive. They are a charming and erudite pair, and Im glad I had the opportunity to get to know them better.

And I am about to go make Warm Apple Almond Pastry and then have a domestic day, as soon as I write that post on linkbuilding. I also have to read the romance novels a student loaned me, to show that I am taking their recommendations seriously. And knit. Blessing is coming over tomorrow for some work-related stuff, but really I think I’m going to have a mostly non-work weekend.

My website is now on the front page at Google, I know you’ll be relieved to hear. I’m #1 at Yahoo, but we all know that Google is the big dog in this business. They have a level of power rivalling that of Wal-Mart. The only reason I don’t hold it against them is that they use their power for good, not for evil.

At least so far. We know what power does.

I have three hours on the clock today, and a dinner party to attend tonight. Still, I think that I can fit some sewing in, or at least planning and cutting. So here are some plaid wool things. I’m hoping that they will help me visualize the outcomes well before I actually cut anything, because after that it’s too late.

I’m thinking that I should probably check the fabrics against what’s in my closet, since I actually have some things in my closet these days, so I can see whether they’d be more likely to fit into my wardrobe as jackets or as skirts. Or variations on those themes.

In fact, I should probably go ahead and plan a SWAP around one or more of these fabrics, rather than wantonly sewing things at random and hoping to find something to wear with them later.

Then I’ll read all the advice in my sewing books on how to match plaids. And do my pinning and cutting with great care.

This doesn’t sound as fun as just jumping in with scissors, but it is more likely to lead to success, I think.

Yesterday I taught class (where one of my students brought me some novels by Nicholas Sparks, since, as she put it, “Everyone has read these except you, including guys”), worked on a post I hope to put up at SEOmoz, did a quick assignment for The Computer Guy, and communicated with several of my clients.

Then came rehearsal of the choirlet.

We talked politics at some length.

Several of the women there like Sarah Palin a lot.

They think she’s sincere and authentic.

They think that all the others are just alike: politicians. They’re thinking only of themselves. Palin, they feel, is the only one who won’t make decisions based on her own political best interests.

I just listened politely.

They brought up Palin’s lack of knowledge or experience themselves, but were unconcerned. No one, they felt, really has any relevant experience when it comes to being president or vice president. They just have to surround themselves with knowledgeable people and pick things up on the job.

They thought it was sad that people look down on Palin for being a hunter.

I didn’t have the impression that hunting was what made people look down on Palin, but I could be wrong.

I asked them whom they’d choose if it were a job interview rather than an election. That is, if they were leaving political views out of the equation and just hiring someone based on their qualifications. No one answered that question. One woman said that you couldn’t compare the presidential candidates at all. They had nothing in common. Another said that McCain was a liberal anyway, and practically a Democrat.

I didn’t watch the debate, since I was at rehearsal, but #1 son did — for extra credit in anthropology class — so I’m looking forward to a report.

Later, I talked with my husband about business goals. I definitely need some better goals. Initially, my goal was to replace my salary while I looked for a job. Then it was to find a job before my luck ran out. Then I got around to thinking how to keep my luck from running out and find a way to continue doing the work I was enjoying so much.

These are not bad goals, if we’re on the survival level of Maslov’s hierarchy, but they’d make lame mission statements.

My husband thought I should put working less on my list of goals. I see his point, but again it’s not much of a goal.

My basic statement of what I do has always been that I gather and disseminate information in such a way as to help others reach their goals. Currently, it could probably be phrased as something like bringing the power of the internet to businesspeople who need some help to be able use it to best advantage.

I probably ought to have in there something about consistently providing an excellent product and great ROI, or keeping my skills and knowledge up to date or becoming a productive member of the SEO community.

And then I need to add something like, “Invoice $XXXX per month” or “Maintain a slate of XX clients” or something equally quantifiable.

There should be smaller business goals as well, like really learning how to use my accounting software, or even just actually using it, and reaching a particular level of traffic at my website. Acquiring all the software I need — and #1 daughter recommends a laptop as well. Improving my XHTML and CSS skills, maybe, though I think that it makes more sense overall  for me to stick to English and leave the coding to the people who really enjoy the pointy brackets.

Then I can add in getting to the gym every day, becoming a Zen Computer Guy rather than a schlub-type Computer Guy (see previous discussion on Janet Evanovich and seeking better role models), and sewing on Fridays if I feel like it.

That may still be a lame mission statement, but I think it would be a step up from where I am right now.