This month has been pretty lean. Not only is it the longest month of the year pay-wise (we got paid early in December) but Christmas was heavy on the pocket. So I have been thinking about money lately. I despise money, in general. That’s why I plan on gathering as much of it as I possibly can, so I can willfully ignore it.
I am afraid I am not so good at gathering money. This is the time when I reflect on old debtors and kicking myself for not enforcing contracts.
One such debtor is Bill. Sarah & I did a website for him nigh over a year ago. $2k (the website has some application stuff built in) but he was slow with the content. We got most of the content from him but he held off on the finishing touches. So, we waited, and once we’d waited enough we installed a content management system and told him that was that. Have a look for yourself. I have tried to contact him a number of times, but still no money, despite the fact that he called me once because his insert key was stuck *sigh*. Ok, I’ll give him a few more months and then his pretty website will turn into a page referring vaguely to failing to pay suppliers ^^
Another debtor, Jim, owes me $10k for some software development I did for him in early 2004. That’s been a year and a half overdue. He complains that the customer hasn’t paid him because of testing and bugs etc etc. He never asked me to fix said bugs and he was working on the same code as me. Grumble, grumble. I think I will eventually get some money out of him but I know people who have had to threaten litigation to get money out of this guy.
My goal with work is simply to earn money working 9-5. I tried changing the world at my last job and that was a miserable failure. So now I content myself with a stable job with no surprises.
Although I’d like to ask for more money from work, now is certainly NOT the time for me to be asking for a raise. The beginning of this year was quite a blow to my work ethic. I think it’s a combination of the post-Christmas blues and the *ahem* possibility of a love life (no, mom, I am still saying nothing, let it go) that have managed to distract me from my first love: work.
This has all been exacerbated by the fact that I am becoming increasingly involved in what could easily be considered the biggest hospital pass software project of all time.
I hope my work-mojo is back now.
On the plus side, Cecil offered me an exorbitant hourly rate to fix something for them today (Monday). Most lucrative 3 hours I have ever spent 🙂