Day 1990

I'm torn between a desire for more work and an equally strong desire to just pack it in and formally retire. It would be nice to be able to buy a new car whenever I felt like it and acquire new cameras and watches with reckless abandon, but I'm not sure it is worth the effort any more. When I started my company, I used to tell students and freelancers to never work for anyone who paid you out of their own pocket. Things were much easier when all my clients were large corporations and the bills went to the accounts payable departments instead the owner of the company. Now virtually all my customers are small businesses and nothing is ever fast enough or cheap enough. It becomes tiring after a while.

I only mention this because some new work came my way today and all of it seemed about as interesting as cleaning up Dot's dog poop. Truthfully, I have been interested in learning how to design responsive, mobile friendly websites, but I'm not making any money doing this. I actually gave away my first two mobile friendly sites because I felt vaguely guilty that my clients didn't have this capability already. I'm just not very aggressive about making money anymore. When people ask me to do something these days, my first response is usually to try and talk them out of doing the job. It's only when they're persistent that I agree to take on new work. I usually know in advance that the job isn't going to pay very well and the client is going to be picky anyway. It's hard to get excited about all this because I still remember the days when corporate clients used to fly me around the world and pay me large sums of money for just coming to their meetings and talking a good game.

I still put in a good days honest work, but what matters to me now are the dogs. They both got a long, rain-free walk this morning and Dot spent the afternoon with me at her physical therapy session. She did great today in the underwater treadmill and seemed to enjoy her acupuncture therapy. Even the vet was impressed at how much she'd improved since last week. I think last week's lethargy might have been weather related. At her age, Dot is bound to have arthritis, along with all her other problems. Muggy, rainy weather just isn't good for anyone's arthritis.

I got a lot done today. The roof is clean and dry again. The dogs prescriptions have been renewed. The trash has been taken out to the curb for Friday morning pickup. Dot got a good workout at her therapy session and I paid the last of the recurring bills for May. Tomorrow I've got several new articles to write and I've got to decide whether to pursue these new jobs that are being dangled in front of me. All in good time. The most important thing tomorrow is going to my favorite restaurant for a leisurely breakfast. It didn't rain today. Maybe it won't rain tomorrow either. There's always hope.

Sam is today's Dalmatian of the Day

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