Clearly my wife, Brenda and I are very much settled into our third quarter transition. It is actually becoming very comfortable to me. I still try to keep regular hours in my ghostwriting career but I also enjoy the flexibility it has given me. For the longest time I found that part of the change in careers to be somewhat difficult to get used to. I still have the odd day I must refer to a calendar to make sure I am on the right day as I frequently think I’m a day ahead.
Where I think I really got a little lost during the transition was that I was no longer required to be downtown on a daily basis. In fact, I now force myself to go once a week to check the mail and take care of other business. When we had our office downtown on the main street there were times I checked the mail three times in a day. I now look forward to “mail day” as if it was some sort of special occasion. Things have certainly changed in my life at this point. I try to still get up each morning no later than 7:00 AM and will sleep in once a week to around 8:00 AM. On the mornings when we vend out of town the alarm goes off at 5:30 AM. When we had our downtown business I was getting up at 6:45 AM and on my single day off I would sleep in until 8:00 AM, if I could. In a way, I’m glad that I can keep the same basic hours as there are many mornings I find that I can get a lot done before noon hour. So far, this New Year has been interesting. Aside from the snow, we are still doing our vending and I am still ghostwriting. We took a couple of weekends off in January opting to go back to the market in Oliver, British Columbia in mid-January. We have also cut our Saturday/Sunday vending schedule down to just Saturdays for now. We’ll add Sundays probably at the end of February or in early March. My ghostwriting, on the other hand, has not slowed down. This is what makes January this year really stand out for me. My ghostwriting was not as established last January and we were not vending as early in the year, either. Things really slowed down and both of us noticed it was much like when we had our storefront business. January was extremely slow as a result of the post-Christmas downturn. Apparently that isn’t the case with web developers in need of content written for their websites. My workload has been pretty steady in this month and the fact that we have temporarily suspended our Sunday vending dates has given me an extra day to catch up. There was one point in the month where I would finish five jobs over the course of a day with eight more in the wings. By the time the day had ended, although I had completed five jobs, another five would come in and I guess I didn’t really catch up after all. It has been an interesting January. I am looking forward to spring so we can get to doing some work in the yard and spending more time outdoors. However, when it comes to vending, I’m not so sure how many outdoor events I want to participate in. I think that comes from starting to realize and recognize that I am really beginning to find that this third quarter transition is fitting me well. I still have the odd off day but for the most part, each day is different from the next and not a blur of days strung together.
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AuthorMy name is George Elliott. I have been in the Media Industry since 1978. I spent 23 years in Broadcasting and worked in a total of six different radio stations located in southern British Columbia Canada during my career. In 2000 I switched gears and moved into the Print Media Industry at a small town, local weekly newspaper. In 2004 I bought the paper and operated it with my wife, Brenda until July 2016 when we closed it. I launched a freelance web content and article writing business from my home in January 2014. Archives
April 2021
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