week four: grey days

sometimes it feels as if all elements of the day are "goal congruent", to steal an accountancy training word, and today's goal is to work towards ultimate greyness in order to match my mood. i knew that this would be a journey, and i armed myself in advance with a backpack full of good intentions: positivity, riding the ups with the downs and pushing forward despite any fallbacks but today i feel flat. and as such daughter #2, the stoic one, wept on nursery drop off, the rain slanted into me as i ran to starbucks, and as i sat down i could only smile ironically and self-awareingly self-pityingly (too much?) as my kitchen companion of the late 90s started wailing that "ooooooh laba, there's no enemeeeeeeee" song. david grey; king of the weepers. i don't think i ever knew the words but could croon it emotionally while cooking. he wasn't actually in my kitchen; no cool london pre-fame friends for me, but he did feel like a close companion as did dido and norah jones: the dinner party years of balham's heyday! ahhh, halcyon times when all seemed possible and achievable and we were all young and in retrospect physically beautiful: pre-baby tummys, bagless eyes, and no mid-life insecurities and oh lordy they've put on sting, not only sting but an acoustic version of the hounds of winter: you couldn't write this. i'll weep into my americano, the only vestige of my diet that remains. i wiped thick sweeps of butter onto my toast in defiance this morning, and yesterday put parmesan AND marscapone into a pasta sauce.

so rather than feeling emancipated and free and like a business owner, i feel like a bit of a fraud, pretending to be a business woman but actually one with no clients as yet. and i know this is only week four but i'm starting to lose confidence in what i think i'm bringing to the market: i need a client in order to remember what i'm good at which is dynamic business thinking. static contemplation isn't really me.

on the agenda today i have more sales pitches to do, i'm going to work on a report pro-forma so that when i do get a client i don't spend 18 hours trying to import images and tables onto word which appears to be incredibly user-unfriendly for that sort of thing,and i have a web-chat scheduled. i'm not sure exactly how a web-chat works and why a phone chat wouldn't be better but i'm happy to learn new skills and to be technically savvy; talking of which have you noticed my new "hit rate" counter?! i'm very excited! this is a light point in my grey period; i've had about 1,600 hits on this blog! i thought i'd had about 25! also i've added a little thing which will allow you to subscribe for this blog on email rather than having to remember to view it. that being said; i quite like counting the hits.

tomorrow i have my first formal networking event at the botanic gardens; i'm apprehensive but excited too. as long as i can pluck up enough courage and small talk to approach people, and enough toughness to move on if they prove to be an unlikely client, then it could be really good. i have also registered with a few agencies to see if any small pieces of work come through that i can then use for networking and learning and testimonial growth. oh, and income...

and the council has increased parking costs this week; it used to be 20p for 17 mins and is now 50p for 30 mins which is an increase from 1.176p per minute to 1.666667p per minute which is a 42% uplift. shocking. and see how good at maths i am? gimme a job, lighten my day.....