First, a little background…

After several years of freelance copywriting and web marketing, I recently got the chance to do some freelance work for one of the web’s more prominent and successful online marketers (who is also a damn good copywriter!). Needless to say, I was thrilled — and we completed a rushed project with results that I’m told were significantly above their recent average conversions. Those words are magic to a salesman-in-print like me, and I was paid in full for the job within days of a successful launch. Great start!

Fast-forward roughly a month, I had agreed to work on contract for that marketer, trading a huge reduction in my best freelance fees for the promise of “more work than you’ll be able to handle every week,” according to my original contact there. Plus, they said I could invoice bi-weekly (or even weekly if I wanted), and would get to work directly with several other members of the team. Overall, the promise of steady work and a glimpse inside this high-dollar marketing organization sounded really attractive, so I sidelined my other freelance work temporarily and focused a week or two of studying everything I could get my hands on from this marketer during my off-hours. I was learning to match their audience, their way of doing business and the unique voice of their materials pretty well.

As you can guess, taking orders from several different team members can get a little, um, scattered at times. Especially when, like me, everyone’s working from various locations across the continent, with email contact as the main mode of communication. Telephone contact was possible “if absolutely necessary”, which was fine with me… I’m not a big fan of spoken conversations for billable-hour work, because of the lack of accountability. Besides, I’d worked with my original contact through almost two complete projects without a single live conversation up to this point, so things seemed to be going smoothly.

(I can guess what you’re thinking after that last phrase… “Cue the danger music, something’s coming!”)

Right after I submitted my first invoice to my contact at the marketing company, I got an email saying that they’d made a mistake in describing the terms of our agreement — because up to that point I’d been dealing with them as a freelance contractor, not an ‘in-house’ one. Which meant that invoices would be held for a 2-week processing cycle, and they’d reserve the right to an additional 30 days to pay. Probably not unusual, but unfortunately I’d already acted on our original agreement and paid things like rent and other end-of-the-month expenses, expecting a new handful of cash to arrive that week just in time for me to attend a planned book-launch promo event downtown. In fact, I’d used the last of my available cash to pre-order some promotional items to bring with me to the event, and they were scheduled for delivery in a little over a week.

Also unfortunately, I’d just started working on a couple of new projects with the company’s marketing team, and was told I could either accept the new terms or they just wouldn’t use my services much anymore. The terms switcheroo was an honest mistake, but seeing as I had sidelined almost all other paying freelance work while I learned this company’s processes and idiosyncrasies, it felt like the handcuffs were on…

Ah well, there’s always a way. Looking at a single bagel and two eggs left in my fridge, I arranged to house-sit for my sister while she went on a week’s vacation. In exchange for feeding the cats and watching the place, plus a small freelance design job, I was welcome to barbeque anything I wanted from the fridge. Immediate problem solved, plus she said I could use her car to get around after I dropped her and hubbie at the airport.

So I settled in to using my little laptop and hers to connect remotely to my own home computers from her living room, so I’d have access to my full library of files and resources. Using software that I discovered working as an IT pro for over a decade, I’d be able to get my work done over an internet connection almost as if I was still at home. A little slower, but still acceptable. I could stay in touch with my new client and nobody would ever know the difference.

(What’s that music again… ?!)

After starting the week off with a frenzy of email conversations with the team members, we began using a somewhat more detailed order-spec system when we discovered that a few important bits of info didn’t seem to be coming through with our weekly telephone calls. At the same time, my sister’s car had gone in for planned servicing, and a home-maid team was scheduled to come over on Tuesday afternoon for their regular white-tornado cleanup visit. Cool stepping into someone else’s life, isn’t it? The car would be back by mid-week, and I planned to head over to my favorite hairdresser for a long-overdue cut at the end of the week during his only two days in the salon. So I concentrated on each day’s writing, staying by the computer for the contract-specified six hours each day waiting for new tasks to arrive.

Monday was pretty busy, with a few rewrites making for a full day of immediate-turnaround work now that we had clear specifications in place. Tuesday, not so much… nothing showed up until the last two hours of the day, when two more “got to have these today” jobs appeared in my inbox. As I worked on those, the mini-maids came in, closing my borrowed-office door while they vacuumed and polished. By the time I surfaced later that evening, the house was quiet and everyone was gone except the cats… and they were looking for dinner, thank you very much!

Wednesday morning, the car dealer called to arrange delivery of my sister’s car. It was pouring rain when the driver showed up at the door as I finished my coffee, so I looked for my shoes near the front door where I’d left them… and they were nowhere to be found. The cleaners must have put them away somewhere or thrown them out — I don’t know, but I can’t find them anywhere! So I grabbed the only things I could find that fit…

I want you to imagine this picture… here’s me walking through the dealership parking lot in the pouring rain, wearing my brother-in-law’s borrowed flip-flops over my socks and dripping wet from head to toe as I searched for a light-coloured Volvo wagon — on a parking lot filled with light-coloured Volvo wagons — so I could get back home in time for my computer-facing shift time. Driving back, I noticed the fuel gauge flashing “Empty” (I’m sure it was half-full when we dropped the car off), and in the back of my mind I remembered my marketing-company contact saying she’d forgotten to process my first invoice until a week later, so the banking delay meant I wouldn’t see any cashflow for at least 5-7 more business days!

(And before you ask, I cut up my evil credit cards a couple of years ago)

Long story short (I know, too late for THAT now!), I made it home. Cancelled my attendance at the book launch of a new business contact — no cash to pay for downtown parking, and besides I didn’t think flip-flops over socks would go over too well in the ritzy downtown club.

Cancelled the haircut appointment, which would have been so much easier to get to with the borrowed car. The carton of milk in the fridge was going sour, and the spare change I had left on the dresser was barely enough to buy coffee and a breakfast sandwich at the local donut shop!

So I finished up the week with a couple of hours of billable writing work on Wednesday, nothing at all on Thursday, and a few hours on Friday adding up to the bottom range of “all the work you can handle” this week. Actually the way things turned out, maybe that was about right this time… Because I found out that my sister’s house suffers from a couple of short power outages each day, just enough to disconnect the hi-speed internet router and reset my remote-control software along with all the clocks in the place while I’m trying to finish the last writing pieces on a deadline. The cats are mystified by the sound of audio-video displays running on my laptop, and make that strange howling meow noise every time I listen to my client’s videos. And Paypal takes their “5-7 day transfer” policy seriously.

I’m going home tomorrow to start a better week. And I’m not even going to READ my horoscope