Day 373

I did some last minute shopping at Northpark today and was amazed at the crowds. I've never seen the mall this packed with people before. The place was total gridlock. I was stuck in parking lot traffic for so long on the way home that it reminded me of the Dr. Who re-run I watched during breakfast this morning. This was the episode where the doctor encounters a group of people trapped on a motorway in New Earth. It often took the people on this motorway six years to reach the nearest exit. The Northpark parking lot was pretty much like this today. Either the recession hasn't hit Dallas yet, or people just don't care. Every time I've ventured out of the house this week, I've immediately become immersed in a beehive of buying activity. Some stores are so picked over that they look half empty.

As Christmas approaches I get fewer and fewer work-related calls. Some clients are on vacation and the rest are in the process of wrapping things up for the year. I'd be amazed if I get any new projects for the rest of the year. I should use these slow periods to do something fun, but I seldom do. Slow periods like this make me nervous. What if things don't pick up again after the first of the year? What if it stays slow like this forever? Business almost always does pick up again after New Year's Day, but I'm in a very unpredictable profession. You never really know.

Being nervous isn't entirely bad. It forces me to think about how to improve what I do. One thing I've already decided is that I'm going to do is upgrade my office computers and software. I didn't really think that getting a cell phone and an iPad this year would make any difference at all, but surprisingly it did. It just makes sense that I should take the next step. If I bring everything in the office up-to-date, maybe I'll see even more dramatic improvements in the year ahead. I hate to spend the small profit I made this year just buying new equipment, but as they always say: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

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