Writing helps me find my ideas. It's your choice to be subjected to it all.

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Curt Is:

Musician, Programmer, Polyglot, Rennaissance Man, Bon Vivante


(credits)
Hunting The Muse
 
Tuesday, April 30, 2002   
So I got accepted into that apartment.  Woo!  I think.  I actually didn't look all that hard for other options, but this one seems pretty good.  It's near Murray and 143rd, north of 26.  (I like north of 26 SO much more than south of 26.)  So I'm going to ask to see it again and ask them if they can replace the carpet, which was suggested to me by someone very smart who chooses to remain anonymous.  They want me to move in the middle of may.  So I'll try and convince them that the 24th is the middle of May.

(6:25 PM)
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Those of you who have known me longer than three months know that I've had a sporadic obsession with online music and indy (especially web-based) artists. In addition to that weblog (which I don't update as often as I should), I also have a series of essays that was my attempt to pull together everything that was going on in online music and related areas, so I could get a handle on it and get a feel for what I felt was really needed next.

So I've been something of an activist about it. Thinking hard about it has definitely changed my musical dreams over the years. When I was in In The Buff, I wrote an original that was really my first successful song - we put it on a cd and sold over 1000 copies. I had all these dreams of being an active songwriter and making royalties, and I had a fairly tortured internal dialogue about what the most appropriate relationship would be between me and my singing group, given my songs. Since I was young and a bit clutchy I thought about getting royalties, perhaps even getting a portion of the cd sales from the group, and even though I never quite took a major stand and demanded that, it introduced some stress to the group. I felt really bad about it and ended up awkwardly apologizing.

My tension at the time was based on hoarding my creativity and trying to control money flow. I didn't want to just totally set any creativity free and let it exist under its own power, because that meant a loss of control - I had all these visions of sneaky pirates and producers coming in and claiming credit for my work.

I can feel kind of silly about it now - while my music is pretty good, it's not THAT great. The ensuing years of being able to find independent music online has shown me that there is a ton of really excellent music that isn't selling bajillions of copies, that my stuff doesn't really hold a candle too (yet). But at the time, all I was feeling was the rush of actually completing a couple of songs and being told by scores of people that my music was really excellent.

While I haven't quite figured out how to relinquish control of my creativity and just let it ride, all this musical-activism research has helped me change some thinking in other areas. For instance, I know there's value in giving hard work away for free. It took me a year to feel okay with putting my music up on mp3.com . Now I would love to just get my music played for free on a web radio station in return for a link to a mailing list. Just to feel the support, just to have that extra bit of fan-inspired motivation to write another song or (dare I say) actually put together a 12-song album of my own.

I'm totally rambling here, but that's okay, it's a blog. My initial point in starting this entry is that keeping track of all the political thinking while also understanding the complexities of the music business (which is harder than computer programming) is very difficult! For a long time I put off signing up with BMI/ASCAP for the same general emotional reason that I resisted having the dream of getting an (evil) record contract - because I wasn't sure if it meant something mephistepholian. (yay, pretentious me!) But the point of this entry is that today I finally asked around, and I learned that there isn't really any good activist or ethical reason (from a music-activist POV) to not sign up with BMI/ASCAP. So I'll be doing that soon. I still qualify, and maybe the exercise of signing up will help me feel more like a real songwriter again.
(1:28 PM)
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Okay, that was the analytical melancholyish entry. Now for the other one.

I AM DEBT FREE!!!!!!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11

I DON'T OWE ANYONE ANYTHING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YEEEEEHAWWWWW!!!!!

ok, thanks.
(11:42 AM)
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I am now out of debt.

My final truck payment went off to Ford yesterday and cleared today. It was 19 cents more than it usually is due to the variance in when they withdraw the payment, I guess a tiny bit of extra interest accrued.

I was worried about this last one. Last time I had a car I had it almost paid off and then I got in a major wreck and it was totalled, so I never got to enjoy the feeling of having a car for free. This time I got through it (although there is a crack in the windshield and the truck is starting to make strange noises).

It's been a while - I've racked up my first credit card balance in my sophomore year of college and I've had debt ever since then. It's weird to feel 100% out of debt, actually. No credit cards, no student loan, no car loan. I think mostly because I had always envisioned it at a time when I'd still have my salaried job, finally able to enjoy my full salary rather than watching $350 or $500 or $600 of it go straight to these bills that weren't really bills. And here I am unemployed and, uhm, below the blue line.

But overall it feels good. I think I will hang out here for a while. I do want to buy that piano and a house, but I don't need to do it this month.
(11:20 AM)
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I am testing from my mozilla-based blog component.  It seems to work really well!  Here's something cool, I can just drag links in to my blogging.  Click, drag: Damon - Fatherhood .  Sweet!

(2:53 AM)
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Monday, April 29, 2002   
Feeling stressed or depressed today. One of those two. I got my notice of rental increase today - if I stayed here as month-to-month, my rent would go up $260/month. The alternative is signing another year lease for another $40/month but I've already decided I can't afford this price for another year. So I got my notice form and will be turning it in tomorrow.

So that basically makes it official that I'm moving, which is sort of frightening because of some other factors. First, I'll be entering into another lease when my income isn't exactly stable right now. I'm thinking that $800/month is reasonable given my sense of my income potential. If I go down to $600/month (which is getting down pretty low for living alone with a vehicle) then that's really saving only $1200 for a year, which is what I can get for landing one minor project that I could complete in less than a week. So I'm mostly going by feel. I've been at "pricey" and I want to get to "reasonable".

However, I learned today that qualifying for even $800/month is a lot more complicated than it used to be. The property managers don't have anyone to call to verify my income. My clients are sporadic so it isn't appropriate to call them. Checking my bank account isn't ideal because my accounts receivable wouldn't be up to date (right now only half of the billable hours I've accumulated are present in my bank account as cash). And on top of that, my average earnings (since when - since January? Since I started?) aren't quite triple the monthly rent as they'd require. Averaged over the last six weeks they are, comfortably, but not since I started - so "how to look at it" is totally up to me and it's hard for them to gauge.

So I just made sure to turn on the charm - I met two of the property managers and they seem to like me a lot - it turns out they need help with their website, also, although I wouldn't be a good fit - but at least I was able to talk intelligently about it. I gave them copies of invoices, a letter of explanation, etc. I pointed out that I have excellent credit and NO DEBT. (Well, almost - more on that later.) And I gave them sample paystubs of my paychecks at my last two salaried jobs, which should hopefully help them feel more comfortable. So I've got finger-crossing going on here.

The other complicated thing is that I had to list the landlord of the house I rented in Eugene. This is the guy that was totally nice about everything and laid-back about everything up until AFTER we moved out, when he freaked out about the house and the yard (this was after we had done a walkthrough together and he mentioned things looked fine). He ended up keeping almost all of my deposit. And they're going to call him. Since it was really his wife that freaked out and not him, I decided to forego giving them a warning/explanation beforehand and just chance it. I always paid my rent on time, so hopefully it will turn out okay. And the manager of my current place should give me a great rec.

As for jobs - one prospect that was doubtful closed the door today. Another that I had hopes for told me to check back in two more weeks. I have one other prospect but it is dicey. On the other hand, my best client told me today that a new project is "coming shortly". So that should at least keep me steady for a bit longer. And I asked more questions and did more math about unemployment, and feel less complicated about working for this cheapie client right now - as long as it's not a huge number of hours per week.
(5:59 PM)
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Sunday, April 28, 2002   
BloggerBot appears to not be up lately, which gets in the way of me posting to my blog so much. I like the convenience of having my blog be on my buddy list. :)
(11:07 PM)
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Friday, April 26, 2002   
Found a great place today - the carpet is still a bit shoddy, but it's nice and it's BIG and it has everything I need! This would be a rental - I will be meeting with a mortgage banker next week to talk about pre-qualifying, but if I don't all of a sudden to buy a place in the next month, it looks like I will be going for this place.
(2:51 PM)
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After all this talk about freelancing and getting a new apartment, I was talking to a rental agent today who is also a real estate agent. I just assumed all this time I would have to put off buying a house because I don't have a salary. But she told me that I could qualify for one of those "No Income No Asset" loans that is around, for usually only about one percentage point higher. And the interest rates are low enough that that is still pretty good. So that made me spin around my brain a bit.

Then I was looking through jobs today and I actually stumbled across a salaried position that looked pretty damn good. Like I was in a noticeably better mood after I read about it.

Aren't you disappointed in me? All that graphing could be for naught!

My She Friend recently found out that her job is permanent and she is not on probationary period anymore, and she has also found a place to live. So that part of my life is settling, as well.

I think we're up to date with my boring life. Which opens us back up to me talking about my boring dreams! Hooray!

My latest idea? I want to find a painter. A painter that likes piano music. And I want to do a coffee table book with them. Actually it's an idea I've had for a while. But it's been on my brain again. It would require buying a piano, of course.
(12:49 AM)
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Okay, more graphs. You've all been asking about them (albeit in snide sniggering tones).

Here's the first one, although keep in mind that the last week, week 16, is a partial week.

Explanation:
Billed (cyan): - This is how much I billed each week.

6m rolling (yellow): - This is my average weekly income, calculated each week from the previous six months (starting 2/17).

4w rolling (red): - This is my average weekly income, calculated each week from the previous four weeks.

cum avg exp (blue): - Some people like Beth didn't understand my explanation of this last time. What's more probable is that she was the only one paying enough attention to even ask. See, she's a Virgo. Anyway. I know how much I need to make this year to meet the year's expenses. I also know how much I've made so far. So every week, I subtract to find out how much I still need to make, and then divided it by how many weeks are left in the year. That's why, if each week I don't meet the new target, the blue line goes UP. You'll notice that the blue line actually went down each time the cyan line went above it.

Anyway, that graph is way too complicated. It gives me a few different ways to feel good about myself (yay! the red line is above the yellow line!) and bad about myself (oh no! the yellow line is going down!), and many many ways to feel confused about myself. So, you ask, did Curt come to his senses and stop making silly graphs?

NO, Of Course Not! Curt came to his senses and made a NEW graph! Here it is:

So what's the story behind this graph? Okay, complicated explanation first. I figured out how much I would need to make for the year. Then I divided it into equal weekly amounts starting from when I began freelancing. (Same amount every week.) Then I took that negative amount and counterbalanced it with how much I made that week. I do that for each week. That's the line that shows that.

Medium explanation: When the red line is flat, it means I have met my expenses for the week. When the red line meets the blue line, it means I have met my expenses for the year up through that week. If I'm at the blue line when the year ends, I've made exactly what I need for the year. If it's above the blue line, I'm ahead of the curve and on track to make a profit for the year. If it meets the other line that you can't see right now because it is so far above the blue line, it means I have met all my expenses for the year in total and am making play money.

Easy Explanation:

  • Red line go down = losing ground.
  • Red line flat = on target for week.
  • Red line go up = making up ground.
  • Red line on blue line = on target for year.
  • Red line go way above blue line = I buy a piano.

What does it all mean? I don't know, it's just what I do late at night when I don't feel like looking for work or sleeping or programming or writing in my journal. What do YOU do at those times? At least I'm learning how to make pretty graphs. So nyeah.

I will write a song honoring the last person to insult me (no deadline, by the way). (Get it?)


(12:18 AM)
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Tuesday, April 23, 2002   
Well, THAT apartment sucked. I just want good carpet and furniture that doesn't look like it came from the Brady Bunch. Is that too much to ask without submitting to a Luxury Community? Jesus.
(4:48 PM)
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Here's my latest dilemma.

My unemployment benefits ran out in January. Sometime after that I found a client that is working with a technology that I *really* enjoy, who needed help for about 100 hours of programming. He was willing to pay a rate way below by normal programming rates. But I figured, I'd have a good contact, I might have a good reference, and at least some money would be coming in.

Since then, I've requalified for unemployment benefits. Thank you, government. This project is still around twenty hours a week plus a bit of stress built on top. I'm feeling financially tense and feeling the need to spend time drumming up more work. This project is still a good contact, but the project is complicated and not close to done.

So here's what I'm running into. If I work for this guy as I have been, I make the same amount of money from him as I would from the government if I worked zero hours. The government would give me a tiny bit extra, but I worked out that in effect, with the government benefits I'm losing by putting in hours for this client, I'm basically working for four bucks an hour. Yes, four bucks an hour.

Now, I know that technically you're not supposed to look at unemployment benefits that way. But the whole point is to have a bit of cash while you use the time to find work that is worth your earning power. If my earning power were really this low, there's no way I'd qualify for the benefits I'm getting.

So the cold non-professional view is to dump the client and use the time to find better-paying work. But the see-it-through, keep the reference, don't burn bridges approach says to keep going. I'm choosing to see it through.

Still puts me in a bad mood, though, at least while it's my only client.
(12:55 PM)
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Monday, April 22, 2002   
Hooray, I got my business visa-check-card! Now I can actually use it for my business expenses to get in good habits.
(11:35 PM)
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Sometimes I wonder if life is just a series of obsessions. You trade in one obsession for another. Now I have to switch to finding a new apartment. I suppose I could stay here, but that would feel pretty stupid. So this week is about finding a new apartment, and hopefully finding a couple more leads on new clients. Last week wasn't great, and it looks like this week will be slow as well.

In other news, I'm again having fun with my a cappella alumni group. I led a "foundation meeting" tonight online, and actually managed to get a large number of people in the same chatroom all at once. First time we've actually managed to do that.
(1:25 AM)
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Sunday, April 21, 2002   
New Fatherhood entry!
(5:09 PM)
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Friday, April 19, 2002   
Here's a pic of my mood as a function of my financial health.
Horizontal:Week number. I'm in week 15.
Yellow Line:My average weekly income, by averaging the previous six months of income (starting 2/17, my first day of freelancing).
Red Line:My average weekly income, by averaging the previous four weeks
Blue Line:My weekly expenses, which go up as my income doesn't match it.

So how do I feel? As the graph would suggest - reasonably hopeful given the success of the past few weeks, and kind of anxious since I'm in a lull. The yellow and red lines need to be climbing for me to feel good.

Note that the stuff after week 15 assumes I make nothing from here on out, so that bleakness is not the point. It's more a matter of what it looks like up until now, week 15.
(3:12 AM)
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All right, all right, I'll tell you the formula. It's ((Gross-DeductibleExpenses)*0.153)/1.0765

Man I was just flooded with email asking for that formula. Maybe now you'll all stay off my back! Creeps.
(2:16 AM)
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I was wrong, you don't pay Self-Employment tax on gross earnings. You pay it on gross earnings minus deductible expenses minus half your self employment tax. You might ask how you can know how much half your self employment tax is when you don't know your self employment tax to begin with, but that's when algebra is your friend. So anyway. I refigured. I just saved myself forty-five minutes of work a week.
(2:08 AM)
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Thursday, April 18, 2002   
Sorry, that was a quote from Zoolander.

I am now in a quest to see Bottle Rocket. I went to one video store and they had it except that they said they had just discovered the tape was bad and hadn't replaced it yet. Then we went to another place and it was rented. Then we went to the same place three days later and it had just been converted to previously-viewed and SOLD! I was ticked off. I want to see that movie. And Donnie Darko, gotta see that too.
(4:45 PM)
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Oh, I'm sorry, did my pin get in the way of your ASS?!!!
(4:43 PM)
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Well, I rented Mulholland Drive tonight. I was watching it with a friend of mine and we were laughing afterward about how we should tell everyone how it was a really great movie, how it was so profound.... how it did get sort of confusing in the middle but then the structure became obvious right at the end and how the realization was so glorious. Because really, we just didn't have a damn clue what we were watching. And it was so loopy that I was sure it didn't have an actual explanation or structure, not like Memento. So then what happens? I go and search for it on Salon, find a review, and find out one brief explanation that made the entire movie make sense. That pisses me off! I hate directors that make you feel like an idiot! Of course I don't think I can be faulted for not immediately realizing that the entire secret of the movie hinges on masturbation. Huh, maybe that's what was going on in Memento.
(2:27 AM)
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Wednesday, April 17, 2002   
Well, the place in beaverton felt very beavertony. It really is right across the street from Nike, right there. Felt a bit boring, but the whole point right now is to find something that doesn't get in the way of my finances. I am not sure I'll be able to find something really interesting or cool.

There is one other one, a place with a baby grand piano in it, coming due a month later than my time frame. I'm intrigued about that one but it might not be a fit either.
(4:51 PM)
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Tuesday, April 16, 2002   
So, my spreadsheet works, my invoices are up to date, and I'm working.  What were all the interesting things I was talking about before I started subjecting all of you to my boring spreadsheet obsessions?  I forget.  (curt hunts for his soul.  hmmmm.)
(3:41 PM)
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Well, I punted on the business name thing. It just got too annoying. I was taking the name thing really seriously, which was probably a problem, but I also didn't want to settle on a name I wasn't psyched about. In the meantime my checking account was sinking and I had checks in my wallet. So I went and signed up as Curt Siffert Software Engineering. They assured me they could add a name later.

I've started looking around for apartments. First lead is a condo out near Nike campus for $400/month less than what I'm spending now. That's on Wednesday.

I had crazy dreams last night. First was that my ex was involved with a new guy named Scott that started hitting her. Then I was in a percussion lesson. The previous day I was experiencing this sense of images flashing in my head and then disappearing before I knew what they were. Kind of like subliminal images in movies, except it was real life. So if I start going all manchurian candidate, you know why.
(3:24 AM)
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Monday, April 15, 2002   
I think Zoolander is the next Austin Powers. Not many people saw Austin Powers when it came out, but then they started renting it, and then renting it more often. I rented Zoolander this weekend and damn, is that ever a funny movie the second time through. Then I watched it a third time and just about died.
(1:30 AM)
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Friday, April 12, 2002   
Okay, when I wrote yesterday, my spreadsheet was looking better, but the calculations weren't entirely agreeing with each other. But now they finally agree with each other. And honestly, I'm comfortably right where I thought I would be. Not comfortable yet, but making good progress. At my current average rate, I need to work thirty hours a week. I'll probably only have about twenty this week. So I'll need to ramp up a bit before time starts working in my favor again. As for this week, I will beat my 6-month rolling average this week, and I'll beat my 4-week rolling average. But both averages are behind my "hard target" (what I need to make each week to break even for the year). Since I have started, I've met my hard target two out of seven weeks. Each time I meet it, it gets easier to meet. Each time I miss it, it gets harder to meet. This will all get a lot easier if I can either increase my billable hours or get a higher average rate from my clients. So basically all I need is one more client at reasonable rates and I can relax for a while.
(1:47 AM)
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Thursday, April 11, 2002   
Hooray for fathers!!!!!

My dad is an Excel freak. He sent me a spreadsheet with a tax table built in and a couple of nifty vlookup routines to help me figure tax rates.

Then I used some algebra to figure out how to calculate what GROSS earnings should be (Before taxes) given a NET (after taxes) amount. That was pretty tricky, but I have it, except for a bug that happens when your gross amount ends up in a different tax bracket than your net amount. But I can plan around that.

So what's the verdict? If I average 25 hours a week from here on out, at my current average hourly rate, I'll meet expenses. I'm not quite there yet, but I feel much more hopeful that I'll get there and then some.

Phew!
(1:31 AM)
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Wednesday, April 10, 2002   
Yeah, so sorta depressing again today.  My dad the excel wizard though sent me a bunch of new excel tax tables so maybe I'll find more reason to be encouraged.  Tomorrow I think I'll finish setting up my business and then I'll revisit this whole thing at the end of next week.  I did sort of feel out a salaried position this week - one that I applied to last year that I actually got an offer for but couldn't take because I couldn't make it to Portland in time.  And I did make an appointment for another pitch meeting next week.  So things are still moving a bit, I guess.
(5:43 PM)
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So I had the bright idea to search for Portland graphic design on google.com and came up with a bunch of people that are good at graphic design but not backend programming.  Figured I'd write and see if they wanted to partner.  Second guy I called said, "Wow, sure - send along your contact info.  Man, I have just been getting slammed with these types of phone calls lately!  Must be slim pickings out there, huh?"  Grr.
(4:29 PM)
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Beth asked what my business name is. Well, I'm still hunting. So far the frontrunner is Tangrams somethings. But not for lack of trying to find something else. Tangrams Enterprises, Tangrams Productions, Tangrams Consulting, Tangrams Solutions, Tangrams Services, Tangrams Creations. But it isn't a lock yet because Tangrams is plural and someone else has Tangram.com

I've been trying to brainstorm all day for another business name. But I can't find anything yet. It's about programming, but I don't want it to be dry and geeky, because I'm not. I'm a bit warmer and more creative than that. More full of life. ("Full Of It Productions?") So I've pored through my music textbooks looking for musical terms, and I've solicited other suggestions. So far the only other ideas I've had are "pedaltone.com" and CurtWorks . The last one kind of made me laugh but it might be too dorky. Any ideas??
(1:07 AM)
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Tuesday, April 09, 2002   
Well even if I go back to salary land there no reason not to take this more seriously in the meantime. So today I figured out how to get a trade name ($20 fee), my own federal tax id number, my city/county business license, and use all that to get my business bank account to make income/expense tracking easier. And I think I can do it all in one afternoon! So hooray!
(1:23 PM)
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Monday, April 08, 2002   
Well, more spreadsheet hacking today, and all of a sudden it is a lot more depressing. Although I'm pretty sure I must be mistaken, on the morbid side, in some of my calculations. First for some reason it looks like ~30k in a year's expenses somehow works out to needing 69k in gross pre-tax freelance income. I mean, that just can't be right. But an online calculator said so. I've got to be double-counting somewhere.

But regardless, I plugged the values in to my spreadsheet and found a couple more indicators. Like I found out that at my current average rate, I'll have to average 41 hours a week from here on out to meet my expenses. Or that at my current average hours per week, I should be charging a rate about double what I'm charging now. And I also figure what my rate should be if I average 30 hrs from here on out, which seems more reasonable... but I won't be at 30 hrs average for a while.

And I'm pretty close to finding my magic number - my magic "desired average rate" number, that needs to go DOWN for me to feel encouraged - and last week, my ultra-busy week, that magic number only went down by twenty cents!

So wah!
(8:44 PM)
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Name

Site

Message

(1:20 PM)
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So yeah, business relationships. They're different. Dynamics are strange. I've been working with salaried folks for so long that I got used to that set of dynamics.

I would usually feel like other salaried folks dealt with their life balance and feelings in a fairly consistent way. When you didn't know them too well, they'd be chatty and would otherwise not let you in much. Sort of toeing the corporate line, they'd repeat back the platitudes that are fed to them at the monthly corporate meeting. But you could tell their heart wasn't in it, and that the had this whole extra life. Then when you'd get to know them better, it would be a bit of a surge forward. You have that first conversation where gosh, you realize that you BOTH feel that the corporate line is actually a little bit of bullshit, and golly, isn't that amazing you both have that opinion in common! So then all of a sudden there is no ceiling. You bitch about work together, you accept that your work duties are pesky annoying gnats, and you go to work each day with your flyswatter of a brain just to get these annoying issues off of you, and then you clear it out of your head and go home and talk about whatever else you feel like to your real friends and family. No other boundaries save the basic boundaries like how vulnerable you feel with your girlfriend or if you're having bathroom difficulties.

Well, it's totally different with the self-employed folks. In short, that first layer of defenses isn't even there, which is nice. But you never actually quite reach that second layer - complete safety - which I find extremely fascinating. It might end up annoying me, but right now I find it fascinating. One thing I'm noticing is that it is a lot easier to mix up business and personal relationships. You're going to do business, on your own terms, with another person who does business on their own terms, so you really are just making up your own interdependent structure... which has a lot in common with friendship. And if you're not careful, you can easily start copying one set of dynamics to the other. I'm noticing two things about myself - one, that I'm getting a bit more brusque with some of my friendships (usually when we are organizing when to meet, what to do), and two, I'm sharing a bit more personally with my business contacts than I normally would if I were salaried. I think it's okay up to a point - I'm feeling more confident about my professional life, and I feel like it is more hooked into who I am personally rather than just the set of skills I happen to have, so it makes sense to be a bit more Curt when I'm interacting with folks.

But it is also jarring sometimes when I hit that mysterious wall, that boundary, of when business, just like that pushy HR person that is always annoying you in corporate land, cuts everything else off and pushes itself in front. The wall springs up out of nowhere, like it just coalesced out of shadow, and meanwhile the more friendship-like dynamics go off and sulk in the corner. I've hit that wall a few times now.

I have a client that is really cool, is about my age, has a lot of interests in common with me, and talks with me about all sorts of things like who wants to partner with him, what frustrates him, how he met his girlfriend, etc - but when I suggested maybe getting together sometime to do some music, he sort of shut down. I also have another client where one the project manager and I realized we were from the same hometown and some friends in common, and we talked about getting together socially at some point. And then his boss got stressed about the hours we were putting in and asked him to handle it, and there was that wall again - things sort of shut down a bit.

In general these people are the sorts that you can see into about six inches deep. It's really fascinating. I'm used to meeting people where I either can't see into them at all due to them being closed off, or where there's no protectiveness at all after I know them. Everyone in this life is right in between. They pick and choose where they shut down the pathways, and it's usually very subtle.

Anyway, this will be a challenge for me - I don't tend to like those halfway phases in any of my relationships... but I also see the need and value for it, and I'm noticing that I'm starting to adopt it here and there by necessity. So it's a challenge... but it's also fascinating and I think I kind of like it.
(1:10 PM)
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Friday, April 05, 2002   
I might be in Eugene this weekend. I might get to eat a Yumm.
(10:28 AM)
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One more bout of money geekiness. self-employed taxes suck. I found out that if I make 30k this way, I will owe more taxes than if I made 45k the w-2 way. Isn't that horrible? So that's why everyone scrambles for so many write-offs.
(1:21 AM)
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I am a Gnumeric Addict. Gnumeric is the spreadsheet I use on linux. I'm going to geek out for a blog entry here. Hope you don't mind. I've been in complete business mode all week since it's really the first time I've felt this freelance thing start to "take". So bear with me.

So I've got a spreadsheet that has a separate worksheet for each client. It adds up my hours for each week for each client, and that client's rate, and gives me my income for the week as well as my effective hourly rate for the week. If I work for Cheap Client more than Medium Client, then my effective hourly rate goes down (even though gross income might go up).

So then I decided to total up my month expenses and turn them into average weekly expenses. I wanted to see if I was meeting expenses yet or if I was merely just competing with unemployment.

Then I started getting a bit fancy. First I thought I would recalculate my average weekly income at the end of each week and watch the average grow. So for instance, at the end of my first four weeks freelancing, I had an average income of $240/week. Less than unemployment. But then the next week I billed about $1100, so all of a sudden my average weekly income was up to around $410. More than unemployment. Hooray!

So I thought I would make it a goal that each week I would try to beat my cumulative average weekly income. Like this week I wanted to beat $410 dollars. Since I had a lot of hours booked, I figured, no problem.

But I don't have many hours booked NEXT week, so I started rethinking that goal - freelancing is by nature spikey. I might have an average income of $1000/week, but regularly bill $1500 one week and $500 the next. Then I'd be failing my goal half the time which would make me feel lousy. So I had to figure something else out.

I was thinking, okay, what's something that would show me I'm doing better in a recent timeframe than I have been as a whole? Like, what would show me that I'm trending upward, WITHOUT making me feel like crap for just having an income pattern that is spikey by nature?

So then it hit me - moving averages! Actually I didn't realize that was what I was doing until after I finished. But now my spreadsheet has a six-month rolling average (which is what I was already using, I just decided to start rolling it five months from now), and I *also* have a four-week moving average. The entire goal now is to always have the current week's four-week moving average ABOVE the current week's six-month moving average.

So how does that work out? Well, with the hours I've put in this week, my 6-month average is about $560/week. However since I've had two good weeks in the last three, my four-week rolling average is $780/week. So right now I'm trending upward very nicely. And what's nice is that even if I bill *no* hours next week, I'll still be trending upward. It can still keep me focused on my month, but not desperate about every single week.

What's nice is that it also gives me a three-week outlook. Right now I can see that my 4w will be above my 6m for at least the next three weeks no matter what I do (although then it sinks like a stone). So I can coast a bit right now if I want - focus more on landing new clients for a month from now, rather than doing anything I can to fill up my hours this week with anything billable.

There's still something that bugs me about this - I'm not sure that this gives me my goal of one super-cool all-powerful indicator that tells me exactly what my business health is. The Magic Number. For instance, I know the trending of both averages is important. I don't have a number that takes the trending into account. And it bugs me that if I don't work for two weeks, I can beat both my 6m and 4w averages in week three and still see the 4w average go DOWN the next week. But maybe that makes sense... because even if I have a killer week, it doesn't mean I'm doing really well overall if I was a complete bum for the previous two weeks.

Eventually this is going to put pressure on me. My ceilings are two-fold - one, my hourly rates, and two, the amount of time I put into this per week. Or in other words, the fact that my earning power is directly linked to when I am actively putting thought into my clients. I can't clone myself or double-bill or externalize myself to bring in money when I'm not physically (or mentally) there. So there will probably be a point where I'll be maxed out on a reasonably hourly rate and the amount of hours I'll be able to work, and I'll have a hard time keeping my 4w above my 6m. I think when that happens I'll have to start figuring out the next step... perhaps starting up a real business, perhaps designing a product or a hosting service so I can earn money that isn't connected to my active effort.

Well, I'm done being a money-obsessed mercenary. For the night. I also thought a ton about music today. And the new personal dynamics I'm running across in business relationships - entirely different than what you find in the land of corporate salaries. But I'll write about them another time.
(1:14 AM)
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Thursday, April 04, 2002   
I've met half my month's expenses for April so far. Phew!
(2:35 AM)
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Wednesday, April 03, 2002   
Wow. I haven't had a twelve-hour workday in a long time. Actually, I don't think I've ever earned as much money in a day as I did today. Cool! Of course, that still doesn't mean I'm even going to meet expenses this month. We'll see.
(3:16 AM)
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Monday, April 01, 2002   
Here's my April Fool's mischief for the day. I own a couple of complete domain names where anyaddress@thatdomain.com comes to me. Every once in a while someone gets confused: 

Tina:

Please order a wall nameplate for:

Stacey Dolden

Please fax quote to (xxx-xxx-xxxx) and charge AMEX #(xxxx xxxxxx xxxxx)
Exp. 5/03

Doreen

So I wrote back: 

Hi Doreen - 

We have a special right now, you can include your favorite insulting pet
name for only a quarter more per digit.  May I suggest one of the
following?

Stacey "Slobbering Dog" Dolden
Stacey "Putrid Platypus" Dolden
Stacey "Smells of Camels" Dolden

Sincerely, 
Tina Conway


(4:04 PM)
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