Yesterday I taught my class, did updates to a website, sent the weekly report to The Northerners, and met for four hours with the client who wants to collaborate.

That meeting went well, actually. She was happy with the results, and gave me a hug when she left, and she clearly understands that extra time is on her dime. We had a little email exchange with The Computer Guy in the midst of it all, and we all seem to be on the same page.

She's a home stager, which is someone who helps you fix up your house so that people will buy it from you. She offered to give me advice about my house. I'm not selling anything, so I don't need the advice, but I recognized that desire to give advice. I like to give advice, too.

"I'd have to get rid of all the electronic stuff and musical instruments," I said.

She agreed. I'd also have to pack up the books. The goal, you see, is to get the personal touch out of the house. It should look as much like a hotel as possible. "You have to know the purpose of the room," she said. "Is it a music room, or an office, or a library, or a living room?" I assured her that it was all those things, and agreed that it was unfortunate.

We had a good time. I tried to resist apologizing for my house too much. I don't go around correcting people's grammar, or even thinking about it, so I figure she doesn't go around thinking about how people's houses are, though I did assure her that I was expecting to be able to clean house sometime around the second week in May. Maybe I ought to hire someone.

The new designer sent a contract and professes himself ready to begin today. I'll have to get said contract signed and back to him from the client, but we may get that page done briskly. And a client for whom I did a strategy report a few months ago came back with an offer for a six-month contract, so there again, if he signs, I've got another nice gig.

I went to the gym, knitted, folded laundry, and read. Altogether, I did eight billable hours and one unbillable, had gym time and proper meals, and relaxed in the evening. Quite a normal day.

The meeting went so late that I had a good excuse to miss the party last night that I didn't want to attend. I often don't want to attend parties, and often if I go ahead and go to them, I have fun, so I usually just steel myself and go. Well, maybe not usually, but half the time, certainly.

This was a party for the Master Chorale. It was a farewell to our esteemed conductor, and for that reason I would have liked to have gone. There are also several people of whom I'm fond in that group, whom I don't see apart from rehearsals.

It was better to stay home. I now have Monday evenings free. Remind me not to schedule anything else on Monday evenings.

I'm planning a vacation for July. I've been invited to sing at a folk music gathering, and they've sent me a ticket, so I'll be going to stay with my old college friend for a week in Southern California. Should be fun.

Last night I got the usual Sunday night raft of stuff from those of my clients that do their planning for the week on Sunday night, and I was struck again by how lucky I am to have work that I love. I'm excited about the various projects, and looking forward to my class.

There are so many people who dislike or tolerate their work, and mine is a continual adventure. I've been able to keep music and a social life, do volunteer work of various kinds, and continue learning and spending time with my family, while also building a successful freelance career doing something I love to do. While I still need to work out the bugs in the system, overall I'm very lucky, and grateful for that.

The bugs in the system include fine-tuning my workflow, getting systems for administration in place, and fitting in what needs to be done about my physical health and well-being, as well as housekeeping.

I talked with #1 daughter about this yesterday. She has just been promoted to Regional Trainer for Jenny Craig.

I told her I'd joined the online Weight Watchers, but that last week, between Easter and the daughters' visit, I'd completely ignored it.

"We all have our excuses," she said firmly.

"I'm not making excuses," said I. "I'm recognizing the reality of my situation and coming up with solutions." I explained that I thought the online program would help me eat right and exercise, in spite of my mad schedule.

"Will they call you and tell you to turn off the computer and go to the gym?" she asked.

I admitted that they hadn't been doing that for me.

"You need to get your meals planned and ready on Sundays," she told me. "You should have salads ready to go on the plate. Don't give up any one particular kind of food, or you'll crave it and overindulge. Plan your work around your gym visits. With the kind of schedule you have, it's inevitable that you'll let someone down: is it going to be yourself?"

At this point, readers are probably evenly divided between wishing they had #1 daughter for a personal coach and being thankful that their daughters aren't as scary as mine.

Braced by this talking-to, I prepared a nice healthy dinner for the family: Provencal chicken, brown rice, lettuce from our garden.

"Are there mushrooms in this?" #2 son demanded accusingly. "Olives?"

"There are going to be vegetables in the food sometimes," said I.

"90% of people don't like mushrooms and olives in their food," he assured me. "You can cook without mushrooms and olives. That's all I ask."

After a moment's thought, he added, "And strange beans. And any fruit with meat, 'cause that's weird."

"What about broccoli? Snow peas?"

He had to admit that broccoli and snow peas, and indeed any vegetables aside from onions, peppers, tomatoes, and corn would be unwelcome. He stood by his claim that 90% of all 17 year old males would agree with him. Why he felt this was relevant I don't know.

I graded papers and then I continued with Salt Peanuts while watching Fortysomething on the computer. The sons were moving out of the family house.

"Someday they'll all be gone," the husband said. "How will we handle that?"

"The same way we handle everything else," said his wife. "Badly."

I don't feel that I'm handling things badly.

I do feel that I need to figure out how to take care of myself, with time and attention for eating right, exercising, sleeping, and relaxing. Also for dressing properly and getting haircuts and getting the laundry done. This has always been challenging for me, I guess, and my current work situation, lovely though it is in most ways, makes that negative tendency worse.

I've eaten a proper breakfast and logged it on my WW page. I'm going to pack my gym bag, in spite of how much work I have to do, and stop by the gym on my way home from class. I don't skip teaching my class in order to get on with my computer work. I just say, "I teach a class in the morning, but after that I'll get on with the ERP" or whatever it might be.  There's no reason I can't take the same attitude toward my gym visits.

This was yesterday's breakfast. Blueberry sauce and sliced strawberries to pour over the pastry, and a quiche full of vegetables.

We ate this while discussing our book club questions, and then went to pick up #2 son from his sleepover.

A trip to the phone store, where we eventually gave up on porting my phone number over to my new phone. If you ever call me, I'll be calling you at some point so you'll have my new number.

I also have to go all over the web and change the number. Not that people call me, or that I want anyone to call me, but there it is.

Following this adventure we went out for a business meeting/lunch, where we made much progress on our plan. Then the girls went to hang out with friends, while I read a bit, and then came the concert.

Arkenboy joined us. He and I were standing in the doorway talking about something, I forget what but it must have been fascinating, while the rest of the family got dolled up for the concert, and then we walked on out, discussing which car we'd take, and they dropped me off at the stage door.

I strolled in and met the house manager, who said, "Where's your music?"

Yes, I had actually arrived at the concert hall without my music.

I borrowed the house manager's phone and #1 son brought it to me, getting it there right before we started the warming up. Following that nerve-wracking moment, all went well.

Warming up, apart from us, sounds like those magnified recordings of insects, or the sound from a pond in the early morning in spring, or wake up time at the zoo. The soloists in their dressing rooms contribute vocal parts, and the instrumentalists go ahead and play bits of stuff all at once. It's absolute cacophony.

But the chorus warms up all together, so it can sound pretty good, to the extent that scales ever sound good. Then we go through the score, back to front, doing four notes at a time from all the little places where the choirmaster felt worried about us. "Wir weg! Wir weg!" and we all stop, and then perhaps "Selig sind...selig sind" and then a bit of verschlinging and "ihr mir dar" and then we head off down the hall to the performance.

The concert seemed pretty good from where I was standing, the soloists were very good, we had a standing ovation, and then we went home and ate drive-through burgers, sitting on the floor.

Notice the preponderance of rich foods and lack of walking or gym visits.

#2 daughter and I got up at 4:15 this morning so she can get to work on time, and I have a couple of church services to do.

Good class yesterday, nice long workday at the computer, and then rehearsal.

Coming through the stage door, finding the spot, silence while the orchestra tunes, hard work for a couple of hours, hanging out in the hallway listening to the soloists warming up while the house manager roams the halls shushing people, or trying to.

Home just in time to meet #1 daughter in the driveway, #2 daughter arrived shortly thereafter, clamoring for pizza. We got pizza, and sat on the floor talking. Not sure why we sat on the floor, as we have plenty of chairs and things, but that's what we did.

Both the girls are being successful corporate girls. #1 is being made Regional Trainer, heading out next week to San Diego for her training for the purpose. #2 was recommended by her supervisor for a leadership training program at her company, and turned down because it isn't open to people who've been there less than a year. However, when they were looking at her information (presumably scratching their heads and saying "What's with this girl? She's only been here for six months, can't she read a calendar?"), they decided to make a special training program for her instead of requiring her to wait.  

Today we will be talking about the possibility of taking my happy freelancing to the point of actually being a firm. I found such a firm online -- no, actually, a prospective client of mine did so. He sent me a white paper from this company and asked whether I could do for him what they do. Of course I said yes.

So we're going to explore the possibility. The thinking is that in a few years, when my girls have absorbed all the corporate knowledge from the corporations for which they work, we'll go in for world domination ourselves. Or at least for a company big enough to support all three of us.

It could happen. The Northerners, who are including me in lots of projects nowadays, seem to have at least five in-house, plus me and a couple of other telecommuters. And they look a lot like The Computer Guy. In fact, in a coincidence that wouldn't be tolerated in a novel, their companies have very similar names. As though one were called AllBright and the other BrightDay. So I look at let's say AllBright, which is several years older than BrightDay, and think that I can see how BrightDay will be in a few years.

So why not my company, too?  BrightDay is a couple of years older than my company. When I met The Computer Guy just about exactly a year ago, his was a fledgling business. He's still doing it all by himself, and I'll be doing mine by myself for a couple more years, but it could be moving toward growth. AllBright hired their first full time worker when they were about three years old.

As long as I don't have to be the manager.

The girls and I are therefore having our Book Club meeting, with The Creative Entrepreneur being the book. We're doing the first two chapters, which contain questions like "What one tool, used well, would make the most significant difference in my business?" and "If you were to answer your creative calling and knew you would not fail, what would you do?"

The object is to help you think about your business in terms of four pathways:

• heart and meaning, or what you really love to do and want to accomplish
• gifts and flow, or the things that come easily and naturally to you
• value and profitability, or how you'll support yourself doing those things
• skills and tools, or the things you need to use to accomplish what you want

Author Lisa Sonora Beam holds that creative entrepreneurs often fail because they don't get these things in balance.They think about their own preferences and ignore their customers, or they focus so desperately on making money that they lose their motivation and excellence, or they don't bother to learn how to do the bookkeeping and screw up...

I think that I'm pretty clear on heart and meaning and gifts and flow. I'm strong in the value and profitability area, too, I think. I had good answers for those questions. When it comes to skills and tools, I'm less secure on the answers to the questions. Do I need more tech skills and better grasp of design and coding? Those seem to be the things that I most often wish I knew more about as I go through my workday, and also the things I've learned most about over the course of the year.

But bookkeeping and accounting and stuff like that is my most glaring lack -- and I probably haven't learned much about that stuff because I just reject the thoughts of it whenever they arise.

Didn't I say I was going to work on my accounting software every day this week?

• Minutes spent walking this week: 90
• Minutes spent producing music: 480
• Minutes spent teaching: 150
• Minutes spent studying: 150
• Minutes spent working at the computer: 2050
• Minutes spent on accounting or bookkeeping: 0

The book also asks about your "business advisory circle" and leadership skills. I don't even really know how to answer those questions.

So today's discussion ought to be interesting.

Have you seen the YouTube of Susan Boyle singing "I Dreamed a Dream"? I have, because it was emailed to me and tweeted in Twitters I follow and generally spread out all over the place. It was widely hailed as a wonderfully heartwarming thing.

I had a different response to it.

If you haven't seen it, let me encapsulate it for you. A rather dumpy and unattractive 47 year old woman appears on a TV show which is I guess the British equivalent of American Idol. She sings well. People are amazed.

Is this heartwarming? No. The implication is that we should be amazed that an unattractive woman can sing. How could we be amazed by this? How stupid are we?

I'm outraged that people assumed she couldn't sing, just because she's a bit frumpy. I'm also guessing that she will now be cleaned up a bit so she'll look better. Then people will no longer be amazed that she can sing, I suppose.

Our baritone soloist last night looked rather like Jackie Chan, and the soprano looked like the popular stereotype of a librarian. None of us were amazed that they could sing. I was interested to hear what you could get in the way of a voice for $3500 apiece. They were very good.

The college symphony sounded a bit fuzzy. I'm sure the chorale did, too. The conductor was shushing them and exhorting us to look up and sing out, and generally being a lot more like one of those decorative traffic policemen than anything else. I was surprised that we were having trouble being heard. There are 170 singers. A lot of us are generally held to have big voices. On the forte passages, I was singing loud enough to feel my voice leaving my mouth, which usually means a very loud sound. I'm sure everyone else was, too. And yet the conductor was having to stop the rehearsal and say, "Strings! Read the forte as double piano!" It was somewhat embarrassing.
 
I think it'll be an excellent performance, though.

One week ago I had a tidy workspace.

Oh, well. Yesterday I worked on various people's blogs and brochures for ten hours. Gotta expect some evidence of it, eh?

It was Amazon Vine day, so I took a break at 2:00 and snagged Corel Painter and gourmet beef jerky for the boys. Last time I requested Corel software, they canceled it, so I am not entirely sanguine about receiving it. I had reviewed the first thing they sent me -- Graphics Suite -- by saying that it was wonderful, but not Adobe, so you could expect compatibility problems. I stand by that, but I use Graphics Suite all the time, and I'd love to have more of their products. The beef jerky was a request from #1 son, who was here at the time.

Today I have further blogging, a site update, a class to teach, an another rehearsal. Also, my daughters are coming in.

I'm looking forward to that.

Janalisa and I went for a walk yesterday. I was also scheduled to walk with Partygirl, but by the time she called I'd had a sudden urgent deadline arise, so it was particularly good that I'd gone for the walk with Janalisa.

We were complaining.

As a general rule, complaining doesn't make people feel better. You know that griping around the water cooler people do in some companies? Studies show that it makes them feel worse, not better. Ditto for analyzing every moment of what went wrong with that relationship, with your girlfriends. My basic rule is, if it can't be fixed, don't complain. If it can be fixed, then just fix it instead of complaining.

But there are times when you just want to get it off your chest, right? And Janalisa and I are similar in that we both have nothing to complain about right now. She's working less and having more time for her family, but that means that for the first time in years she won't be going on a cruise this spring.

See? You feel no sympathy for her at all, right?

And me, I have so much work that I feel a bit frantic over getting it all done, a complaint that gets very little sympathy from people who are worrying about losing their jobs. So of course I was glad yesterday when someone said they'd decided to go with another firm rather than me and The Computer Guy, right? No, I wasn't. I was miffed. And also, my husband is getting all this overtime, so I'm sleep-deprived.

You don't feel any sympathy for me, either, do you?

Janalisa and I also took the opportunity to complain about having such wonderful accomplished children (wow, the tuition payments for those highly competitive schools!) and such busy social lives, and if we'd walked further we might have started in on how rough it is to be smart and beautiful.

Just kidding about that. But there are some things for which people just can't be expected to have sympathy. So it's good to get together occasionally with an equally fortunate friend and whine a bit.

The boys and I got all the taxes finished up yesterday, and #1 son worked out a payment plan for his back tuition so he can get back to school in the fall. I really feel that he ought to pay some of it. I felt that at the time. It seems to me that he should have had a full-time job while he wasn't in school, and that his hanging around being a slacker while his dad and I work as much as we do is wrong. But I'm going to go ahead and fix him up and let him have one last chance before we say, "Okay, that's it. Now you have to go be a grownup and take care of yourself." That comes down to a hundred dollars a week -- grocery money, essentially.

Am I complaining again?

I think I've found a designer. #2 daughter found him for me, actually. He's an IT guy, and has very nice code, as well as attractive visual effects. I'm now waiting for the go-ahead from the clients. Janalisa pointed out that having a team just means I'm responsible for him, but it seems to me that I'm already responsible for the designers I've presented to my clients. This way, I can move the project management work from the unbillable to the billable side. Possibly this will lead to less complaining.

Oh! One year ago today I lost the job I'd had for like fourteen years and found myself unemployed for the first time in my life.

Things have turned out okay.

So yesterday I worked a lot on an article about fishing. Last semester I had a student who wrote exclusively about fishing. His father was a professional bass fisherman, and this was his only topic. I got so sick of it, I asked him please to write about something else. He wrote about hunting.

If only I had saved some of his papers.

Fortunately, #1 daughter is living in Shreveport. Fishing is huge there.

"There was a big thing at the convention center," she told me. "People came to get autographs and pictures with the fishermen. They also caught fish in a big tank. I bet they were trained fish, though. They caught them and let them go and packed them up for the next show."

She also told me it was all about the beer.

I'm also writing about a new technology for sterilizing biohazardous waste. And rewriting a brochure about reservations software for campgrounds. And linkbuilding for a nanny franchise.

Last night in Tuesday class we signed up for next year's class. This is a seven year study, and I have now done all seven years. I'm amazed that it has been seven years. That seems like such a long time. I don't know whether I wan tto continue it next year or not. Many people continue and go through it over and over. You're at a different point in your life, they say, so the same study means different things to you.

I might like to have Tuesday evenings at home. I currently have only Friday evenings at home. However, I enjoy Tuesday night class, and it's the time when I hang out with Partygirl. I might not see her otherwise. In fact, I have quite a few friends whom I only see at Tuesday night class. I'll have to think about it over the summer.

Summer! It's hardly even spring yet. But my fellow teachers are asking about how the semester is ending, and we're kind of feeling like everything is winding up. I'm teaching summer school -- five days a week. I'm concerned about fitting in all my work. Right now, I'm engaged in being calm about my work for the rest of the week. I have about fifteen more billable hours' work to do, plus teaching. There are three days left. I can do this.

I have a client who wants to meet with me. I met with her last week -- bringing the unbillable hours on the project up to 4.5, when the budget only covers 5 billable hours -- and then wrote up her site. I sent it to her and told her I had time for revisions on Monday. On Tuesday, she sent me something completely different that she had written herself. I offered to correct the typos, but she said she wants to meet and work on it together.
 
I thought of those signs you see on garage walls:

But I'm trying to have a gracious spirit about it. Last night we heard a lot about the importance of having a gracious spirit. She has no idea what my schedule is like, after all. She doesn't know that my life has been stressful lately. She probably thinks it will be fun.

If only it were about fish. I could use a collaborator on that fishing article.

If it should happen that you get invited to hang out in a room with really good acoustics while 170 people sing Brahms, you should go for it. It sounded really good last night. Intoxicating, even, in the lovely parts.

The Brahms requiem has some not-so-lovely parts. The bit where the tod ist vershlungen and all the death where is thy sting and the sixths? Not lovely. But the dramatic vershlinging parts are important to the story, and then come the sweet and beautiful sections in which we tell God He has a nice apartment.

It's German. Probably sounds better if you speak German, or at least understand it. If I had to hold a conversation in German, I could admire an apartment, discuss pain and kissing, and ask for costly fruit. Oh, and I could also chat about death. Where, for example, is its sting?

So I did get to the gym yesterday. I didn't get to the accounting. It got to be 4:00 and I still had too much work to do. I kept adding assignments. This is nice, though there were a couple of slight complications. My Northerner is adding me to jobs simply by copying me on emails. Thus I found myself in a conference call yesterday in which I had never seen the website and had no idea what the job was. My fellow callers, when I mentioned that I hadn't heard of this job before and asked if they could bring me up to speed on it, said it was an ERP, as though that clinched the matter. And I guess that, for them, it does. For me, headings like "Touch Plan" and "SCI Other Educators Report" don't actually suggest content.

"Some parts," I said, "are more self-evident than others."

The developers were silent. I asked what the company did, but they didn't know and didn't seem to see why it mattered. "You're doing the verbiage," one said helpfully.

I tried not to sound stupid.

The Computer Guy is so overbooked that he's not taking on any new projects, he informed me. I had just lightly assured someone that I could arrange a website for her. So when Arkenboy emailed me later saying he was short on work, I seized on his email with joy, even though he's a hardware guy, because who knows? maybe he's also a designer. Nope. Either I have to learn to build websites, or I have to quit assuring people I'll fix them up with a website. Or find a designer who isn't busy. The one I found last week charges 30% more per hour than The Computer Guy and I, and charges $70 for a task he routinely does for free, and is just generally too expensive for my clientele. This may be why she isn't as busy, but then it may also mean that she doesn't have to work as many hours. I was disappointed. She seems nice.

However, as I think about tracking down a designer, it also strikes me that I could spend a lot of hours finding designers for people, with no benefit to me or to my business. They don't work for me, after all. The Computer Guy and I swap work -- when he needs a writer, I'm the writer. For me to spend hours qualifying someone to whom I will give jobs for which they'll make ten times what I will, with no advantage beyond having saved the client a bit of trouble -- this may not be a sensible business move.

I cleaned up some websites and ran some reports and stuff, and the WSJ lady emailed me some more questions. Her article this morning is about something quite different -- interviewing badly. I may just be too cheerful a topic.

Today I've agreed to write an article for a guy who hasn't paid me for two months. He says it's his new payment system. This may be the modern version of "The check is in the mail." I'm doing this one more article for him, though. This week I have sixteen blog posts for an oDesk client (for which read: guaranteed payment), so I can be magnanimous. But this is it for this guy. I also have to help #1 son do his taxes, and we all have to do our state taxes, because we forgot. In previous years, our state taxes haven't been due till May. Plus we've had our taxes done by someone else. Next year, I will definitely have all the taxes done by someone else.

In there somewhere, I will be going to the gym or for a walk, one or the other. I had an email this morning reminding me to do it. Now if I put my accounting time into Outlook, and it comes up when I'm not busy trying to finish up somebody's meta tags...

Yes, it appears that I do what my computer tells me to do. There's something wrong with that, isn't there?

Yesterday was difficult. Holidays are hard after a death, and it was the first time the family had been together since the memorial service.  It was also hard to sing about joy in church, under the circumstances. Holy Week is hard on church musicians; I performed in six services, singing about death and joy in roughly equal measures. In the last one, I just wept through the handbell piece and then skipped out to finish deviling eggs.

The meal turned out well and the visit was pleasant, though I definitely talked too much.

That's an enormous dish of Potatoes Anna there, and Bonanza's delicious bread in the back corner,and my mother's flatbread,  and a fresh strawberry pie below.

Pineapple upside down cake, while it is  nicer to eat if you use crushed pineapple, doesn't look as pretty as if you do the pineapple rings and maraschino cherries.

That's okay.

I'm starting the week with a tidy work area and a good long list of billable work. My daughters and I are beginning our "book club" with The Creative Entrepreneur by Lisa Sonora Beam. This week we're doing chapters 1 and 2, which include "what do you want to do when you grow up?" parts, "What is your USP?" parts, and "what skills and tools do you need to get so you can succeed?" These are all good questions. I'm pretty solid on the first two sets, but I don't know about the third. Sometimes I think that accounting skills are the thing that would make the most difference, and sometimes I think that continually increasing my tech skills is the key, and sometimes I think that partnering with other people who have those skills is a more practical approach.

The final section of Life@Work is called "Support and Structure," and The Creative Entrepreneur talks about that quite a bit as well. A lot of my work is about supporting others. I've had help and support from quite a few people this year (it's two days till the anniversary of my job loss). I think I'm doing well with my work. I have some good goals, I'm making good progress toward them, and most things are going well.

Some things are not going well. I have to take better care of myself physically. I've joined Weight Watchers online and am starting their Momentum Walk-It Challenge today. I hope this will provide enough support and structure that I'll eat right and exercise. I don't know where the support and structure will come from that could lead to my getting enough sleep, but I think that's an essential, too.

I also have to get on top of my bookkeeping. I'm going to make myself a 4:00 pm appointment daily to work through the online training and get my system up and running. 4:00 is when my family comes home and interrupts me anyway. And if I'm going to cook a proper healthy dinner for the family before we head out for rehearsals and stuff, that's when I should start finishing up work.

I'm off to pack my gym bag, dress, and head out for class.