(no subject)
May. 8th, 2008 04:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynI am so tired. Mentally and emotionally tired. Physically I feel fine, though I still can't seem to get out of bed in the morning before 10:30, even though I started setting my alarm for 9:30 just to keep up with my NYC Crazy French Clients. But it's hard to get out and get up, especially when there's a 12-pound, soft squishy cat nestled in the small of your back.
Anyway. I thought that I'd be skiving for a while in the unemployment game, building my freelance editing stuff, and maybe do some occasional work for the Crazy French Clients. Oh no. You know how they say freelance is a feast or famine game? I am feasting, unfortunately, a bit too much (I'm full now! Please stop giving me food!), though the famine will hit after the end of the month, when all these things come due.
The first part is school. My practicum course is going better this year, for a number of reasons, but a large part of it is that I have slightly more competent students than I've had before. I don't think there's a ringer in the bunch, but there are definitely some weaker students. Then there's the timeline compression -- we decided to try squishing the class into six in-class sessions with a late start, early end, and I think it is helping the students be more participatory, be less slacking. It hasn't helped the instructor -- I no longer have the week between classes I was able to squeeze a personal life into, and because these students seem to be more go-gettery, I have more work to do every day than I have had before. Resumes are still a major problem point, but I think that's never going away as long as I do this.
I have one student, though, who's contributing a rather high percentage to my exhaustion. She is very bright, creative, but she can't ask a simple question. It has to come with at least five minutes of preamble, repetition of the main part of the question a couple of times, and then significant postamble as she tells me again why she was asking. And she mentioned to me that one of the other instructors had taken to pretending she didn't see the student's hand raised sometimes. I felt really bad, but she keeps me after class for up to 45 minutes, and at that hour of the night, I just want to go home. My car was one of the last three in the parking lot nearest our building when I got out Monday night. I always wonder what real teachers do about these kinds of students. Do you cut them off? Talk to them outside of class to be more to the point? I can see some of the other students biting their tongues in class when she starts.
Crazy French Clients are also contributing in a major way. I inherited them from the magazine when I left -- they were so happy when I made some edits to a small thing they sent in for a different part of their organization than the one we worked with at the magazine, even though I was rude (which, being French, they probably responded well to) accidentally. So they asked if I'd be interested in editing the small pieces being put together for a big exhibit to open at the Corcoran in DC in June and an interactive photo essay online; I was thrilled to, of course, partly because they are a great company that will pay much higher business rates than publishers pay regular copyediting rates, and partly because I was anxious to have a first client when striking out on my own.
Of course, the small pieces with 24 hour turnaround have turned into large projects with hourly turnaround, and the huge charity they are working with, based in Switzerland, don't get back to us in timely manners or don't accept changes, or don't communicate, or etc. And that drives my French contact in NY nuts -- yesterday she was muttering on Skype in French and I didn't know what she was saying, but her tone was international. (BTW, anyone else have Skype? I love it! I want to chat with more people!) She is incredibly grateful for me, but I live in constant fear that I don't understand fully what she's asking of me. Her English is, as she says, "baby English," and I speak no real French, so I sometimes waste long minutes trying to parse her emails, and it's almost worse when we talk to each other by phone, because I'm writing things down and trying to make sense of what she's saying. You throw in 20 or 30 files with similar names and no clear purpose, and it makes for a global misunderstanding time-crunchy wingding. I am working constantly on this, to the point that I haven't been able to find time to capture video for my VVC vid, and I had hoped to make more than one new vid, but I can see that slipping away.
Then I got a book to edit from one of my co-instructors, the person who had been so encouraging to me to take the leap and freelance. She said she often had CE work that she needed to farm out, and so far she's keeping me busy. The author of some sample chapters for a book proposal she put together liked my edits so much, I'm now doing the rest of the book. It surprised me, because the author was very twitchy and really didn't want someone else editing her book, but my usual hands-off approach seems to have worked well. I've learned through many years of doing this that it's often best to leave people's voices alone, despite the itching desire to make it much better than it is. But this book is due before end of month, and I can't even get time to start on it (I need some time for head space clearance from AIDS pandemic to fly fishing, call me wimpy). And then I also got a proposal from my friend to edit as well that will have to be done over the weekend, crammed in among my social life plans.
The funny thing is, I know that by end of month, I'll have time to market more for book publishers, but it's something I should do now, rather than later, when the famine hits. I want to have a social life! But I fear that these every weeknight till midnight things will happen for a while, at least until we get more countries under our belts for the Crazy French Clients.
Then I got a backup service so I could do online backups, lest something catastrophic happen, like losing yet another hard drive like I did last week. But so far it's causing me an inordinate amount of trouble, enough that I had to uninstall it to see if I could upload a vid file somewhere, as it seemed to affect my ability to ftp, and poof! my Downloads Stack disappeared from my Dock, and I can't get it back. Mozy must be the only explanation, as it's the only thing I've changed, but I fear it may be gone for good unless I reinstall the OS, which I so totally don't want to do. I also have to get a new external hard drive because Time Machine killed my latest one, which I'm rather bitter about. I did not know it was set to run automatically when you hooked up an external drive, and overwrite the volume structures if it ran out of space. Yes, thanks, Apple. I spent $$ on Disc Warrior, hoping that it would save it, but it doesn't. Technology gives me the blues this week, and is adding to my stress and exhaustion.
Everyone I know has received their Economic Stimulus rebate money already, except me. I was hoping to buy a printer that would work with my new computer (none of the suggested solutions for my old printer work). But at this rate, I'll be too tired to go out and buy one, if it ever does arrive.
Possibly the worst part about being so busy? I finally, after lo these long years, feel like writing a story. I had a Jack/Ianto story that I checked in with Christy about, wondering if there have been 3,000 others just like it, but she said she hadn't seen that, and I finally figured out how to solve the central conflict, but... I have no time. I've tried so hard for the past few years to get my writing mojo that disappeared when sis_r died back, and now I want to, and have some focus, but have no time. Gah! Oh, Jack and Ianto, you call to me, you woobies.
Anyway. I thought that I'd be skiving for a while in the unemployment game, building my freelance editing stuff, and maybe do some occasional work for the Crazy French Clients. Oh no. You know how they say freelance is a feast or famine game? I am feasting, unfortunately, a bit too much (I'm full now! Please stop giving me food!), though the famine will hit after the end of the month, when all these things come due.
The first part is school. My practicum course is going better this year, for a number of reasons, but a large part of it is that I have slightly more competent students than I've had before. I don't think there's a ringer in the bunch, but there are definitely some weaker students. Then there's the timeline compression -- we decided to try squishing the class into six in-class sessions with a late start, early end, and I think it is helping the students be more participatory, be less slacking. It hasn't helped the instructor -- I no longer have the week between classes I was able to squeeze a personal life into, and because these students seem to be more go-gettery, I have more work to do every day than I have had before. Resumes are still a major problem point, but I think that's never going away as long as I do this.
I have one student, though, who's contributing a rather high percentage to my exhaustion. She is very bright, creative, but she can't ask a simple question. It has to come with at least five minutes of preamble, repetition of the main part of the question a couple of times, and then significant postamble as she tells me again why she was asking. And she mentioned to me that one of the other instructors had taken to pretending she didn't see the student's hand raised sometimes. I felt really bad, but she keeps me after class for up to 45 minutes, and at that hour of the night, I just want to go home. My car was one of the last three in the parking lot nearest our building when I got out Monday night. I always wonder what real teachers do about these kinds of students. Do you cut them off? Talk to them outside of class to be more to the point? I can see some of the other students biting their tongues in class when she starts.
Crazy French Clients are also contributing in a major way. I inherited them from the magazine when I left -- they were so happy when I made some edits to a small thing they sent in for a different part of their organization than the one we worked with at the magazine, even though I was rude (which, being French, they probably responded well to) accidentally. So they asked if I'd be interested in editing the small pieces being put together for a big exhibit to open at the Corcoran in DC in June and an interactive photo essay online; I was thrilled to, of course, partly because they are a great company that will pay much higher business rates than publishers pay regular copyediting rates, and partly because I was anxious to have a first client when striking out on my own.
Of course, the small pieces with 24 hour turnaround have turned into large projects with hourly turnaround, and the huge charity they are working with, based in Switzerland, don't get back to us in timely manners or don't accept changes, or don't communicate, or etc. And that drives my French contact in NY nuts -- yesterday she was muttering on Skype in French and I didn't know what she was saying, but her tone was international. (BTW, anyone else have Skype? I love it! I want to chat with more people!) She is incredibly grateful for me, but I live in constant fear that I don't understand fully what she's asking of me. Her English is, as she says, "baby English," and I speak no real French, so I sometimes waste long minutes trying to parse her emails, and it's almost worse when we talk to each other by phone, because I'm writing things down and trying to make sense of what she's saying. You throw in 20 or 30 files with similar names and no clear purpose, and it makes for a global misunderstanding time-crunchy wingding. I am working constantly on this, to the point that I haven't been able to find time to capture video for my VVC vid, and I had hoped to make more than one new vid, but I can see that slipping away.
Then I got a book to edit from one of my co-instructors, the person who had been so encouraging to me to take the leap and freelance. She said she often had CE work that she needed to farm out, and so far she's keeping me busy. The author of some sample chapters for a book proposal she put together liked my edits so much, I'm now doing the rest of the book. It surprised me, because the author was very twitchy and really didn't want someone else editing her book, but my usual hands-off approach seems to have worked well. I've learned through many years of doing this that it's often best to leave people's voices alone, despite the itching desire to make it much better than it is. But this book is due before end of month, and I can't even get time to start on it (I need some time for head space clearance from AIDS pandemic to fly fishing, call me wimpy). And then I also got a proposal from my friend to edit as well that will have to be done over the weekend, crammed in among my social life plans.
The funny thing is, I know that by end of month, I'll have time to market more for book publishers, but it's something I should do now, rather than later, when the famine hits. I want to have a social life! But I fear that these every weeknight till midnight things will happen for a while, at least until we get more countries under our belts for the Crazy French Clients.
Then I got a backup service so I could do online backups, lest something catastrophic happen, like losing yet another hard drive like I did last week. But so far it's causing me an inordinate amount of trouble, enough that I had to uninstall it to see if I could upload a vid file somewhere, as it seemed to affect my ability to ftp, and poof! my Downloads Stack disappeared from my Dock, and I can't get it back. Mozy must be the only explanation, as it's the only thing I've changed, but I fear it may be gone for good unless I reinstall the OS, which I so totally don't want to do. I also have to get a new external hard drive because Time Machine killed my latest one, which I'm rather bitter about. I did not know it was set to run automatically when you hooked up an external drive, and overwrite the volume structures if it ran out of space. Yes, thanks, Apple. I spent $$ on Disc Warrior, hoping that it would save it, but it doesn't. Technology gives me the blues this week, and is adding to my stress and exhaustion.
Everyone I know has received their Economic Stimulus rebate money already, except me. I was hoping to buy a printer that would work with my new computer (none of the suggested solutions for my old printer work). But at this rate, I'll be too tired to go out and buy one, if it ever does arrive.
Possibly the worst part about being so busy? I finally, after lo these long years, feel like writing a story. I had a Jack/Ianto story that I checked in with Christy about, wondering if there have been 3,000 others just like it, but she said she hadn't seen that, and I finally figured out how to solve the central conflict, but... I have no time. I've tried so hard for the past few years to get my writing mojo that disappeared when sis_r died back, and now I want to, and have some focus, but have no time. Gah! Oh, Jack and Ianto, you call to me, you woobies.
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no subject
Date: 2008-05-09 12:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-09 04:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-09 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-09 03:33 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-09 04:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-09 01:17 am (UTC)Um, I don't. The checks don't get mailed until tomorrow, so everyone who didn't do direct deposit on their tax returns doesn't have it, either. And I was told today that people with Social Security #s ending above something like 80 would have to wait ANOTHER week, whereupon myself and three other people all went "CRAP."
So there's four+all the paper filers who don't have it.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-09 04:50 am (UTC)This weekend is going to be work around some personal time -- are you all pencilled up for the weekend already, or do you want to watch some more Slings & Arrows?
no subject
Date: 2008-05-09 06:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-09 06:36 pm (UTC)Even though it's overwhelming you, I *am* glad to hear you're getting enough freelance gigs. I don't think I could do that, so I was concerned for you!
Huh.
Date: 2008-05-09 01:54 am (UTC)I haven't seen my Stimulus Rebate Monies but since mine is staying with my ex-but-on-paper-not husband to cover the income tax bill I can't say whether it actually arrived or not. I love the absurdity of my government. -em.
Re: Huh.
Date: 2008-05-09 04:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-09 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-05-09 07:04 am (UTC)I'm glad the freelance is working out so well, and that a chance to breath is coming up soon. I'll bet your dance card fills again before you have much chance to enjoy it.
no subject
Date: 2008-05-09 03:16 pm (UTC)Not me! Is everyone supposed to get it?
no subject
Date: 2008-05-09 03:22 pm (UTC)If ever you need someone to overflow to with freelance work, I hope you'll think of me.
I am looking for someone to have a "go to the garden store" play date with...any interest?