week twelve: to contract or not to contract

i've just had three meetings and marched around edinburgh (to blister point) through the snow and tram works selling myself. it is a lot better for the soul than sitting on my bum emailing unconvinced chamber members that they really want to pay for my services, when what they actually want to do is meet Q1 budgets and not be accused of frippery with regard to ad hoc consultant spend. however there may be some joy on the contracting front: more later. what has intrigued me for the last 5 minutes (and i stress it was only 5 mninutes so that no one thinks i'm wasting precious expensive child-free time on pointless web based shenaniguns....) is the chinese comment posted last week. i know it is chinese because i downloaded a translator, he's sitting on my sofa and is very nice. no, i downloaded a translator gadget and it came up with some translations and they are intriguing. it would seem that "smart people like to guess heart, though every time my guess was right, but lost his heart, silly people who like to mind, although each have been laughed, but got someone else's heart". hmmmm. there are 15,000 different translations of the comment but all follow roughly the same story. so does this mean smart people can lose heart even though their guesses are right? which, i would think, means something nice for me. or does it mean silly people mind about these things and we laugh at them? less nice. if anyone has a chinese colleague please do run it past them...

SOOO thank you for all the other comments and posts; especially for the reassuring ones regarding slow januarys etc. my focus this week has been on bravely undertaking a finance review and subsequently deciding it is time to bring in the agents thus avoiding bringing in the bailiffs. interestingly this week has also been challenging because daughter #1 (age 4) has gone through quite an interesting developmental stage and taken to shouting random things at me. for example: "grandpa ron? isn't he dead yet?" and to chris evans: "hey, you, it's monday on OUR planet too you know". also her addiction to my i-phone means that she now beats me at "toobz" and throws a total wobbly when not allowed to play on it. her favourite position is on the loo playing for hours. she get's this from her father, clearly. i thought this phase came at about 13. daughter #2 helped by saying very clearly last night "what's all this poo on my bed?". rather defensively i said that there wasn't any poo on her bed, then noticed rather a large clump of something brown on one of the rails. weetabix, surely. rather apologetically i wiped it off. who's the mummy please?

so i've been buoyed up by two good agency interviews (they always say nice things don't they? i think they're quite therapeutic! just when you need a boost you should go along and they ooh and ahh. you may not hear anything for a few months but it's always a nice way to spend a morning). however one of them does have a three day a week job; i tick some but not all of the boxes, and there is a possibility that i could do it under my company banner and thus have my first true client. so i'll find out more about that one tomorrow. i can't say too much about it as i think i may have to stretch the truth on my recent audit experience but surely that's the name of the game (i was an impossible case, no one ever could reach me. we're still listening to a LOT of ABBA in the car at the moment. however they do like some of the tracks on the recent live lounge CD and sing-a-long to "all the single ladies" before breaking into some warbling version of sleeping beauty's "i know you" song.)

also i think financial panic has set in because we are now very uncertain as to whether daughter #1 will get her state school place due to unprecented levels of application this year. joy. we're not keen on the next state school option hence enter the private school quandry: another variable to add to the melting pot of financial needs..

that being said, i do have a possible lead from one of my networks which i'll find out more about later today. also i met with a chartered accountant who runs her own business, specialising in value-add services today. she was fantastic to talk to, about 10 years ahead of me but the same qualification and similar commercial and strategic background in industry. she now offers formal accounting services as well as the value-add bits and admitted to having to wing-it on the technical front quite often, looking into the detail afterwards. so perhaps i need to change my business direction and rather than looking just for the cream, accept that i need to do a bit of the udder work too. so i think i may need to tweak the website and that may be my afternoon's undertaking.

so does anyone know anyone that works in the publishing business?! i need a lead into that so that i can suggest a diary style book based on the blog and make my fortune that way! answers on a postcard please...