this woman’s work

I’ve got a lunch meeting

Aug 23, 2007 work work work

I’m leaving in ten minutes. Noah is building roller coasters on his state-owned computer (it’s a PC — it makes me love our Macs even more). Madison is “riding” the roller coasters. Brett is showering.

My dad had the brilliant idea (remember, he used to cold call back in the day) of finding a way to reward myself every time I make X number of contacts. Or, say, do X number of things to get work. He says that so much of this is big picture stuff that it’s easy to get discouraged (boy howdy). I think that whatever reward I use will need to be one that Brett can join in on, even if it’s just driving through Starbucks or renting a movie after the kids are in bed. Because one thing we realized during this Week of Reassessment is that Brett is totally out of the loop about what my life here in the basement is like and he needs that encouragement, too.

I haven’t had any work (well, other than the usual jobs that come around over and over again) this week but then when I sat down and looked at my planner I could see that part of this is that two of my editors are on vacation (I’m waiting to hear back from them both — one for permission to invoice and one for permission to move forward past the planning stages) and so I do have work, I’m just not doing it yet.

I’ve also noticed that my meetings have changed of late. I’m meeting less often with broad groups and more often with specific people.

I just ordered my next batch of postcards and this time I’ll follow up a week after they go out. I didn’t do this last time because so many people were on vacation. But this time I’m choosing my top 5ish prospects and getting in touch with them personally.

Talking to Julia was a huge help this week because:
1. She knows I love my husband and so she never said anything like, “Oh god, why are you even WITH him!” Or “Why don’t you just make him get a job again?”
2. She knows what it is to work with your partner full-time and how crazy it can make a person.
3. She believes in me. (She so totally believes in me. I cling to her faith sometimes, lemme tell you.)
4. She calls me on my shit (shades of my mother, my favorite therapist and my beloved Becca) and when I referred to something my darling husband did as “stupid” she said calmly, “Now that’s a choice word,” which cracked me up and now Brett and I are saying it to each other a lot.
5. She understand the values behind our decision to get us both home and never acts like we’re crazy to even think of trying it.

You know, support is an amazing thing and I’ve got it in spades — friends and family. I wouldn’t be able to do this if I didn’t have them behind our efforts, honest to god.

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