The life of a freelance copywriter isn’t for the faint of heart. Most days, it’s quiet and boring and more than a little bit tedious. Occasionally you find yourself giving the same basic speech to a prospect that you’ve given to a hundred others over the years, and most of the time the work is about pushing numbers around on a screen and sending out letters and invoices. Many days, you don’t have anything in particular scheduled and so you spend some afternoon time playing video games, watching TV and doing laundry (so that the better half lets you play video games on company time).
When it rains, though, it pours. And then it’s just drama drama drama.
After several days of procrastination, I couldn’t put off Big Website Revision anymore. This was a very big (i.e., expensive) job that we signed back in January, that’s languished on the client’s desk for several weeks pending review and revision. I got the revision spec back from them on Friday; the thing was just a mess. Mangled grammar. Misspelled words. Revised points that made no sense. Other revised (and major) points that flatly contradicted most of what I was told in the original client interview. Worst of all, the spec doc itself is a jumbled collage of MS Word markup and formatting/margin psychoses. So I’ve been grumbling under my breath (and in email to Kristi) about my feelings sometimes about clients. Oh well: billable hours. Suck it up.
In other news, a very important check arrived today. The check itself wasn’t so vital, but it enables us to finally pay a pretty big bill that I brought with me from Florida. The last major one I brought with me. So combined with the stellar February we had – not quite as good financially as February ’07, but still pretty excellent – and the fact that I’m already booked very healthy for March, I feel like we can finally start to breathe a bit and really start tackling wedding bills. It’s going to be a very good March around here.
We’ve also started talking again about honeymoon ideas. Those plans have been in constant flux since October, starting with a B&B in St. Augustine and then shifting over the West Coast and now we’re talking about an Alaskan cruise. Of course, it depends on money and time, but I’ll admit I’m looking forward to getting the pre-hitched phase of our relationship over and enjoying a peaceful getaway as a married couple. Now that the rings are here and everything, it’s real.. and all can’t come fast enough.
PS – I’d like to say hello to the individual who told us recently that they’ve decided to boycott R&K for some unknown reason. We really don’t get it; it doesn’t make any sense to either one of us, all things considered. But it’s your call, and we’re not going to claim to understand it. Hope everything is going well with you.