When I clocked out today at 5:00, I was done with work for the year. I wasn't entirely sure that would be the case. However, last night I finally finished my most recent editing project. Without another to immediately jump into, that leaves me free and clear until Wednesday morning.
It's rather fitting that my first post of 2012 was dedicated to freelance editing and its demands on my time. Let me tell you, had I been through then what I've been through now, I may have just quit while I was ahead. The project I just finished was a doozy. It was given to me in June, and there was absolutely no way I could even fathom it taking me, almost literally, until the end of the year.
Sure, I got a slow start on it. As I got into it and realized how much work it needed, I started to give it more attention. My first serious goal was to have it done by the middle of October. Then by the end of October. Then by Thanksgiving. I tried to think of some serious consequences for myself if it wasn't done by the New Year; fortunately it didn't come down to that. Even with the holidays and all the demands they added to my time, I was able to sit down for some marathon sessions and get the thing done. Over the course of the 6+ months I worked on it, I put in over--well. I don't really want to say how many hours I put in, because my wife will be livid over how comparatively little I was paid for my time and stress. Suffice it to say, it was a significant number.
So as I come full circle and end 2012 the way I started it, I'm not completely sure of my freelance editing future. Not in its entirety, but some aspects of it have to change.
Here are a couple of other recent goings-on:
• Because of said editing project, I totally crapped out early on my goal of participating in NaNoWriMo. I did, however, at least finish the short story I had been working on for a couple of months (at least), and which had been banging around in my brain, in one form or another, for years. I'm currently in the "let it settle" mode for a while before taking another look at it for the second draft.
• On December 22, I was finally eligible to upgrade my phone at a discount. I was toting around a Droid 2 that I was in hate with.* One thing I did like about it, though, was that it had a physical keyboard instead of just the touchscreen. Being someone who cares about precision in his text, I wasn't thrilled about the possibility of giving that up. Of course, the only real upgrade option that still had a physical keyboard was the Droid 4, and given my distaste for its predecessor, I wasn't excited about going that route either. So I took the plunge and got myself a Samsung Galaxy SIII.
Dude.
It's awesome. The screen is huge and crisp, and it's blazingly fast. I dig it. Yes, inputting text is a bit more of a chore than it was with a physical keyboard, but not as much as I expected. As long as I take care to read over what I'm sending before I do so, I don't expect any problems.
* I actually really liked the Droid 2 for a long time. Then, earlier this year, Verizon sent out a system update that hung halfway through, sending my phone into a loop and bricking it. To replace it, they sent me a "refurbished" phone, which sucked. It was slow and glitchy, it would reboot occasionally for no apparent reason when I was in the middle of using it...just a pain in the ass. It totally soured the experience. I absolutely would have ordered the Droid 4 otherwise.
• Also in the tech department, I took another plunge and placed an order today for a 50" LED HDTV. It should be here late this week or early next. I'm super stoked about it. I've thought for a while that our current TV was too small for our living room; it just so happens that our bedroom TV (a 12-year-old CRT behemoth that's gotten a TON of use) is dying. So the living room TV will go in the bedroom, and two problems will be solved. If it shows up in time for the Alabama-Notre Dame game, that would be awesome, but mostly I'm looking forward to playing PlayStation on it until baseball season starts.
No comments:
Post a Comment