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Tag: freelancing

It costs money to be prepared.

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If I’m going to go on a tear and execute a build project I absolutely love to have everything I need/want on hand to build it. That means laying out cold hard cash for materials, consumables, tech, tools and hardware so that once I’m in the mood, I can press play and go off about my business. But that also means that I need to be stocked up on various screws, bolts, glue, tape, drop cloths, and have the wood acclimated to my work space long before I begin. Buy more clamps here, a larger orbital sander there, more sanding sponges, a nicer rubber mat to stand on for hours on end. It takes time, effort, planning, and yes money. Lots of it. Spent weeks or months before you can possibly have the chance to utilize it. Which isn’t all that much fun, but when you’re neck deep in the “thing” I sure as hell don’t want to stop in order to go visit two or three hard ware stores to find a thing I need. Hate that. Mood killer. Joy sucker outer! Obstacle making fun time murdering pain in my ass. So I stock up ahead of time. Now I am no Adam Savage. I don’t have that kind of income, nor capacity go store a whole hardware stores worth of stuff. But my most commonly used screws, bolts, glue, and sandpaper I keep in stock. I just have too! I’d never get anything done. I’ll give you an example.

With the right tools a job can be started & finished (depending on complexity mind you, always with the caveats this guy!) With ease and you’d think, oh! You’ve wasted your money on that concrete drill. But no. Because I have the correct tool, and bit, I’m not sitting out there for hours chewing through bits and batteries to bolt on a new cover for a vent. Bam-bam four holes drill. Squee-squee for tapcon bolts put in, nice and firm with the correct tool. I could be about that all day with a hammer, drill bits, and a socket set, swearing and sweating my ass off. But nope, ten minutes and I’m in, out, cleaned up, and on to something else. Perfection. All because I went ahead, while sale watching, for a concrete hammer drill, and the appropriate bit, and sized falcon bolts. Bought them at a convenient time, and was able to utilize them to complete a job, nearly headache free. If I recall I lost a socket bit in the grass by the garage on that job, but that was me being clumsy, and not a tooling error. I tripped and knocked the bit off the end of my impact gun because I hadn’t put the socket on properly. I did however end up finding that bit, like five months later. Which was awesome. I don’t know if I owe a squirrel or chipmunk a thank you for that or not.

Anyway – I’m gearing up for springtime so I’m on the look out for an upgrade to my bandsaw, and a better office chair. I sit kind of funny, I guess, and I tense my thighs a lot in my current chair, so I need to find a better seat, one that doesn’t leave me feeling hobbled after a three or four hour stretch of intense work. And bandsaw wise, I want at least a full 1hp, but would ideally like 1.75/2 hp if I can find the right deal. Plus a 3 tpi blade for resawing. As it stands I have a good load of Ash, but it’s too thick for what I want to build, and seems an awful use of resources to turn 60% of each board into planner chips, when I could resaw them all and use 90% of all of it, if I make them a half inch thick, or three quarter in thick on the bandsaw. My eight boards becomes 24 or 32 boards after a day of resawing. Well worth the trouble/hassle of making all those cuts. I’ll leave one at full thickness because a trestle table build is calling my name!

I’d love to get a sawmill up and running too. Process logs for my own stash of building materials. Oh what a hoot. I’d run a chainsaw mill if I could get a big enough, cheap enough saw and Alaskan mill set up for the farm. A sawmill would be far faster and have better results than a chainsaw mill, but would also be ten times the price. What do time and effort have to do with anything! Bah! The saw mill also needs a skid steer, and a sheltered place to work. I’ve given it a lot of thought over the last three or four years. Don’t forget about having to assemble the whole thing. Leveling out the beams and whatnot. It’s a whole thing. Plus building a suitable pad to work on. Plus some form of shelter from the worst of the sun/rain/snow. Making stickers, and stacking piles of wood everywhere for atleast 2 to 3 years before you can sell a single slab, or use one yourself. It’s a commitment. Plus additional tools needed to roll, and turn logs, getting rid of saw dust, burnable waste. Pretty soon it’s a real big spreading, all consuming issue. I’d still love to do it a few times a year though. Strange dreams I have here when it’s cold outside.

How did I get here? Office chairs, and bandsaw for resawing, which got me to thinking about milling, chainsaws, and massive life consuming saw mills. Ha. Funny how that works. Well, it’s Thursday, and tomorrow is a PA day, so I need to think about what I’m going to do to keep these kids busy. We have taekwondo tonight, but beyond that it’s any bodies game! Ciao Bella.

RULE #361 : Never underestimate how much more people are willing to pay a big named company to do the same thing you (a small boutique company) can do for them, with higher personalized quality and more cost effectively, while trying to not pay YOU at all.

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Oh the joys of self employment. I ran into this all the time when I worked in-house for a few companies over the last two decades. You’d pay a half a million dollars or more for an idea, and in the end you would only be supplied with the raw pieces, and a little lone production guy (formerly me) would put those elements together while getting paid a tenth of that over a whole year, and not just for that one campaign element. If you want the creative folks to put it all together you need to cut a different, equally high Studio cheque to have it put down so it can be printed, or go live on the App/Website.

Now I get to do both, which is very creatively fulfilling. Production work is the bread and butter which funds the time it takes to create new and exciting things. Can’t spend your time contemplating new ideas if you’re dead ass broke. Have to fund that kind of time with the more straight forward stuff. Things like moving a line of products from one die line to another. Taking existing artwork and rejiggering it to fit new parameters, and tech ical specifications. Like migrating web banners of a landscape orientation, into a bus stop print ad in Portrait orientation. It takes technical skill, and compositional know how to get one to look and feel like the other. To carry over the essence while being almost entirely different. Which is challenging, and fun all at the same time.

I don’t make a habit of chasing RFP’S, and bidding on work. That all takes an awful lot of time, effort and opportunity cost to do. Whereas if I build relationships with people, you can be assured that those positive experiences can, and will carry over as Marketing people, Brand Managers and such move from product to product, and industry to industry. You don’t forget the ease at which you can work with some folks. And when the opportunity presents itself, they will seek you out to further that working relationship. It’s rather nice. Word of mouth is a real help too. But mostly if your friends, are friends with people whom are Managers, Directors, CEO’s and persons of clout. That helps a lot. Hard to pull in new clients from the very ground floor. It is doable, but good grief what a slog that is. So many hurdles and obstacle to jump. Not to mention the constant harassment about compensation vs. Exposure, or timely payments. And the endless nitpicking over your invoices, asking for by the minute break downs to account for every single penny. Makes being creative very difficult if you spend half your time fighting for yourself & reputation.

Here it becomes readily apparent just how easily they’d cut a $50,000 or a $100,000 dollar cheque without batting an eye lash, versus paying your the $3,125.75 invoice. For that they want a line item by line item audit. Meanwhile you didn’t pull from a prearranged template like those big guys likely did, and built them something custom and totally individualized. I don’t have an account manager to massage the client into accepting the first idea. I don’t wine & dine. I tailor my work to suit, and that needs to be enough. Oh, I’ll have a business dinner, or a round of drinks with my largest clients if/when it’s needed. But I don’t do that weekly, or even monthly. That can come up once a year (Covid has impeded this practice) or every other year depending on circumstances.

So as much as I hate it, Networking is important to growing your business. That and technical skills, quality products, a high degree of accuracy with the end file, and the ability to successfully juggle deadlines, and your time. I don’t wish to grow so large that I no longer do the design work and spend all day managing people, budgets & meetings. That sounds horrendous to me. No thanks. A small boutique that caters to its clientele, and puts out great work which everyone is happy with. I’ll stay there for as long as I am able.

So pay your artists! Invest in quality photographers. And most of all, take care out there. Ciao Bella!

185 degrees of separation.

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Now we are staring down the barrel at the possibility of a 200 day writing streak, and I’m at a loss for words. Now the question becomes, can I reach 250, 300, 365? Can I do a whole calendar year of writing every single day? I don’t know. I just don’t know at this point. It has definitely become a part of my day. Same with lifting weights either first thing as I wake up, or last before I pop into bed. Making time for stuff is kinda getting easier? I’m not sure how to say it. I don’t believe it to be outside the realm of possible to do at least 5 minutes of whatever you like, almost every single day.

But a caveat may be prudent here. I for one, am self employed, and I work from home. I have my hours set up so that I can take my kids to school in the morning, and pick them up at the end of the day. I have a small list of clients, and I don’t work more than 40 hrs on a busy week. The rest of my days are far lighter on average. So I’m not single (for starters), I do a lot of the cleaning, and household work because I am home, and I have the time to do so. And my spouse makes pretty good money, so my wages are offset by what we save for not doing before and after school care for two children. Plus I take them to appointments and look after them on their sick days, so my spouse doesn’t have to miss work, unless it was communicable and she ended up catching it too.

So knowing all that. I can safely say, I find it possible, under my current circumstances (one of privilege) that if I put my mind to it, I can read, write, sculpt, do some wood working, and play my guitar, dance and sing with my kids every day, if only for 5 minutes, because that makes me happy, and life a joy to behold in those moments. When I was working in house for sixty plus hours a week, that was not the case. So there is a continuum or sliding scale. Depending on my work load I may do all of the above in a one hour stretch, because I need to work the rest of the time, but that’s the exceptional busy week that comes and goes as the quarters pass.

I should take this time to mention how much I enjoy working with Apoxie Sculpt. My second run at my Ninja Turtle has been far more enjoyable in epoxy, than the Super Sculpey firm. Which, in these parts at least, comes to your door as a crumbly hard mass that needs to be worked heavily prior to use. I tend to add one firm block to two regular pink blocks to make a pliable medium stiffness in bulk. I always use more than I think I will. Probably not filling out my rough forms with enough tin foil or tape. At $27 a block for sculpey, the $3 tin foil is better used to bulk things out. Live and learn I guess. I look forward to working on the turtle! He is shaping up to be a bit of all right. I won’t put anything like 200 hours into it, but maybe 20-30 hours will do it. I don’t reach that level of polish on any of my sculpts. That level of detail doesn’t tickle my cockles. I’ll leave that to the professionals. When it’s done, if I don’t hate it again, I’ll show you what it looks like. Stay tuned. Ciao Bella!

What’s so special about Day 121?

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Nothing really. Still madly working away on projects for my day job. Built a bench out of scrap pressure treated lumber for our orchard down at the farm. And have been working on house hold things like laundry, dishes and bathroom cleaning, you know fun stuff.

Today also marks 14 days of lifting weights again. Not much change due to starting light in weight, but I think because I changed my mindset about 121 days ago, in regards to finding the time to do things that are important to me, I’ve found it easier to stick with the exercise because that reward pathway is built in my head now. It doesn’t have to be much, as long as I do something physical every day. I don’t even put a time expectation on it for duration. Just do anything, everyday. Eventually I’ll discover a rythm or a regimen that works. But I’m not at that point, I’m just trying to do it, at all, every day. Bicep curls, tricep curls, rowing, chin lifts, kettle bell swings, Turkish get ups, shoulder press, arm raised, shoulder shrugs, bench press with a make shift bench, chest press, squats, lunges. If it can be done with two or fewer dumbbells I’ll try it to see if it works for me, without hurting myself. Do I aim to run marathons or run an iron man triathlon, nope. I just want to feel a bit better, and possibly fit into some nice pants in the future. I’d like to be able to lean over to tie my shoes without my belly impeding my way. But weight loss isn’t my concern right now. Just building the mentality to do it every single day. Legs, arms, back, belly. I don’t care which. It takes time, and a small effort, but I’m happy to have started. Much like writing, I’ll see how long I go for, no pressure.

Tackled two jobs yesterday that I had been fixing piecemeal for multiple years, and the shabby nature of the file, and compounding small fixes finally caught up with me. Had to invest multiple hours into rebuilding them from scratch. It’s better now that it’s done in this manner, but boy did it give me trouble. The project started out with minor changes, then a few more, then several more, and then a total redo. But due to the nature of the first changes, it wasn’t worthy of a rebuild. But mission creep, and the totality of the changes over the years warranted it now. Plus it was giving the printers grief, and made me look bad in the process. So I bit the bullet and fixed every single facet in a single day, and hopefully now it’ll be perfect moving forward. And I don’t hear about it until next year when products get added or dropped, and distributors change their contact info, or logos get updated etc etc…

So that’s my Thursday. I’m waiting on two more parts of my large report and then I can send it off for proofing all of the data / tables and graphs/charts. Then I can make any edits and submit it to the clients. Then it is time for the invoicing! Getting paid – ya!

Day 75! Woah. That’s like a milestone or somethin’.

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Early start on this weeks paid work project. Hoping to get through the first forty or so pages before Monday morning. Still going to be a challenging week even with a forty page head start! That’s pretty insane. But it pays well, and I’ll have two more after this one is done coming to round out my spring.

So Day 75! I’m happy to report I had a tiny spurt of creativity last night while watching Hacksaw Ridge on tv. I worked hard in the morning, and went skating (where I fell on my left elbow) ouch! But had a great time in the blustery icy winds. I dressed accordingly and was thus richly rewarded. A hard fall on my elbow and shoulder when I caught an edge, but, as I said, well padded in warm winter clothes, so beyond the pain of the bump, no real damage done. But these forties, they keep on coming with the physical disadvantages! For real. Makes me question my desire to down hill ski or snowboard any more. Perhaps a shift to only cross country skiing could save me from potential calamity! Plus – exercise and loud music!

Ten pages left to reach today’s goal, so I’ll leave you all to what’s left of your Sunday.