Oh glory, back on deck!

Oh bliss. I have my MacBook back. With a new Logic Board and hard drive. Thank heavens for extended warranty. I'm so glad I had that. It would have cost more than a new Mac to get this one fixed otherwise!
So now I'm head down building websites for clients; I've missed out on ten days' hard graft and am going nuts catching up.
Tonight though I took a break. It's Bastille Day - joyeux jour de Bastille! - so it was an excuse for my husband to buy us a bottle of bubbly. I have French ancestors and that doubled the excuse. I stopped swearing at the computer (some things don't change even after the relief of getting it back but actually I was cursing the designer of a web template I was trying to use) long enough to whip up a dish of grilled chicken breast with a tarragon, cream and garlic sauce. I couldn't think of anything more French to cook in a limited timeframe.
Back to the cursing now. I've promised this guy a website by this weekend...

Enforced rose-smelling

The insane busyness has taken its toll - not on me but on my trusty electronic best friend, my MacBook Pro. The poor little thing has had a major conniption and now won't turn on. It 'hangs' on the startup Apple logo, as if it's afraid to go any further. The fab Apple support line has been brilliant in trying to help me get the little fella going again, but to no avail. So he's booked into the Apple doctor tomorrow.
Meanwhile I'm using my husband's tiny 8 year old PowerBook G4, which can't run Snow Leopard or the newest version of Safari, and which doesn't have Adobe Creative Suite installed. In many ways this has stopped me working. Yeah, I've got Office, but most of my work these days requires the CS and access to modern web browsers.
Surprisingly, I'm not stressed. I should be screaming about the workload mounting up and panicking that my Mac will have something horribly, terribly, fatally wrong with it and it won't get fixed in one afternoon (as Apple is promising me). I should be waking up through the night in a blue funk. These are my normal responses to computer-generated problems. But somehow I've accepted calmly that for the moment I'm buggered, and I'll have to take it slowly workwise until the Mac gets fixed.
My clients have been great about it and haven't pointed out that it's a bit unprofessional to only have one machine loaded with my necessary software. I guess being small business owners themselves they're aware of the cost of multiple licences for software. Aside from which the G4 probably can't run Adobe CS :-).
So it's a sunny winter's day, I still have one rose in bloom in the garden, which I've had the opportunity to admire and sniff appreciatively; now I think I'll go for a ride on one of the bikes. I suspect nature has been telling me to take a deep breath for quite a while.

Construction time

I've spent a hectic day or so rebuilding my company's website. It was looking dated, and I've been mucking around with new website technology - in particular the pages option from WordPress - and thought it was time to bite the bullet. I'm seriously impressed with WordPress. I hadn't used the system before, and it was dead easy to install it on my server, with one click of the Fantastico button.

Next was a template. With literally thousands to choose from I found one that uses my corporate colours and has an ideal layout. Cost me all of $35. Came with instructions and a link to a video which explained it all beautifully.

Within three hours of making the decision to update, I had my four key pages up. I spent most of yesterday populating the site with portfolio items and other pages and doing final tweaking to text and layout. Half the time was spent going through all my work and selecting and editing key items for the portfolio.

A friend who recommended WordPress to me (he uses it to build sites for clients) pointed me in the direction of a contact form with anti-spam options and THAT installed with the click of a button. Very impressive. Having been used to FormMail and PERL scripts, it was a doddle.

My own business is 'business communications': websites, graphic design, copywriting and editing. I started it ten years ago when HTML was still the most common and affordable way to build a website for small businesses. I don't have the mental capacity to be a software engineer - my brain isn't wired that way - so messing around with java and other scripts hasn't been an option for me. I've been supplying people with robust HTML sites until now, but I'll be selling clients on WordPress from now on.

I now have a site which displays seamlessly on all browsers, shows off some nifty little sliders and other graphic devices, uses blog tags (on pages I select to use as posts rather than pages) to raise my SEO and in general looks 100% better than the rather swish little HTML site it replaced.

I'm a happy little bunny today.

Frankenstein's Cat and other stuff

What a ridiculously hectic few weeks it's been. Tons of work on for one of my clients, sadly the one who can't afford a high hourly rate, a not-for-profit organisation. I've been meaning to post on a whole bunch of ideas but haven't got around to it. Some of the stuff I've done has included meeting the Prime Minister, organising a big lunch with another prominent politician as guest speaker, attending industry meetings on behalf of the client, submitting a grant for the client to fund a website redevelopment... it's been manic and I've done no writing, either. I've been working long hours each day, and at the weekend I'm just glad to get away from the blasted computer and work in the garden or just get out and about.

My little girl cat broke her hip several weeks back (don't know how... vet said you have to see them do it to know HOW they did it) and she had a operation nine days ago to cut out the necrotic bit of hip joint which couldn't be fixed. She looks like Frankenstein's Cat, with a three inch long curving wound and ten big stitches. She's limping as they had to cut through a bit of muscle to get to the offending bone, but the vet says the muscle will heal in a few weeks and the limp will improve. She's happier, though. I found her on top of my 2 metre tall bookcase on Monday, sleeping peacefully. She'd jumped up from a little filing cabinet next to it. It's her favourite place in the house, as high as she can get. She hasn't been able to get up there since she broke her hip. When I reached up and patted her, she opened her big blue eyes and I could see the happiness and contentment in them. She was feeling much more her old self.

We have friends flying in from the UK next week and have had to rearrange the spare room somewhat. We have a sofa bed in the living room for overnighters, and a single bed in the spare room which my stepdaughter used when she lived with us. Our friends are staying for a fortnight, so the sofa bed was not an option. We considered buying a new cheap sofa and moving the sofa bed upstairs, but as I pointed out my mother has a sofa bed she doesn't use, and we really, between both houses, don't need yet another sofa. So we swapped the single bed for the sofa bed. I put up some filmy curtains. The whole tenor of the room has changed now. It's my husband's office and with the sofa looks much more businesslike than with a single bed.

T'other half has applied for a job, too. He's been a freelance specialist journalist for 20+ years and has reached the pinnacle of where he can go in the industry in which he specialises. He's a bit tired of doing the same old, same old. And the pay isn't great; we've been a bit starved for cash over the last six months. He's found a government job that pays a bomb, and went for the interview earlier this week. The interview panel seemed impressed with him, thankfully. He'd seen an interview coach (someone I know) and we'd done a couple of mock interviews to get him thinking about responses to standard questions. I really hope he gets this job. We need the money and he needs the intellectual challenge.

The weather here has been revolting. The wettest February in years and when it wasn't raining the humidity was indescribable. I haven't been cycling for almost 3 weeks now. We've taken the dog for early morning walks though; it was a tossup whether to cycle or walk, but she needs the exercise as much as we do, and she loves going with us and chasing a ball in the park on the way.

The local art show is coming up, and they have a new category this year, a 9"x5" challenge. Your painting has to be 9x5 either portrait or landscape, any subject. I haven't submitted anything the last couple of years, but will work on some 9x5 ideas this weekend. It's supposed to be raining and cool but at the moment the temperature is soaring like a lark and so is the humidity. I work mainly in pastels, although I do pen and ink stuff as well. I'm thinking quirky landscapes for the 9x5s.

So that's been my life the last couple of weeks. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible!

Having a growly day. Thank technology.

Gosh I've been grumpy today. PMT? Possibly. But it's the sheer amount of interruptions and 'urgent's that has done me in and given me a headache. While I love my computer for the pleasure it gives me in my leisure time - surfing the net, catching up with friends on Facebook and email, reading other people's blogs - I'm finding technology increasingly annoying during work time.

The bloody phone hardly stopped today. It seems that in my role as admin/marketing/events/chief cat herder for a large Chamber of Commerce I have to be accessible at all times of the day. Of course everything is urgent. From having a great day yesterday where I actually got things done, the General Public has bounced back from Melbourne Cup day in a frantic, nagging mood. I've been lucky to get to the loo without the phone bleating.

If I turn the phone off for a bit to get some work completed, then I get emails which tell me about the phone message they've just left. One guy left three messages asking me to call the other day. I politely told him leaving one would do in the future, as I do get back to people as soon as practicably possible. I think I'm too polite sometimes. I refrained from saying I actually have a life, and two of those messages were out of business hours. I'm stupid enough to reply to emails out of hours if I check the inbox; my own fault for creating a rod for my own back.

But...has technology created rods for backs for most of us? Thanks to the wonders of the mobile phone and the internet, we are now contactable just about all the time. Who hasn't seen someone texting on the train (or, God help us, driving a car!), or even (rudely) at the cinema? Sit at a cafe and you'll be guaranteed people yakking away as they walk by or sit at the next table. We have made ourselves too available. If you want to 'get off the world' for a day, you face a deluge of messages, a flood of 'where are you?s' which induce annoyance in this little black duck.

Life was so easy when I was younger. The pre-computer days (yes, Virginia, they DID exist). The pre mobile-phone days. We didn't have an answering machine at home then. If you were out, you missed a call. Tough. I think it gave me a lot more freedom. If I was out and about and had to phone someone, I used a callbox. The postman came once a day with letters. Things took longer to happen; life was more relaxed. More frustrating admittedly if you wanted to research anything compared to the Internet Joy we have at our fingertips, but I didn't feel the pressures I feel now, this sense of people crowding me into a corner, with demands coming thicker and faster by the day.

Now there's social media to blend into the mix. I've organised a breakfast workshop for later this month with a speaker who'll be explaining how social media works and how you can use it to promote your business. Bookings are coming out of the woodwork. I think about Twitter and sigh that if I go onto it that's one more bloody thing I have to do on a regular if not daily basis; another 15 - 30 minutes a day to put aside for a task. I'm just a bit over it all at the moment.

Am I alone in getting annoyed with the expectancy that I have to be constantly available?

Grr.

Is it wrong to want to be a housewife?

I work - well, I'm self-employed and don't earn much, but it beats setting the alarm for Oh-bugger-o'clock every morning, getting stuck in traffic or sardined in public transport, slogging away for at least nine hours being at one's boss's beck and call, and doing the same slow travel home every night. I did all that for years and it nearly burned me out. Being a passive/aggressive it's hard for me to stand up for myself and say no; I take crap for so long, do a slow burn inside and finally snap. 

But even being self-employed I'm suddenly tired of work. I'm not at the boss's beck and call any more...I'm at my clients' beck and  call. I'm tied to the computer at least five days a week but have the comfort of knowing I don't have to leave home to do it. I can just walk upstairs after breakfast to go to the office.

The trouble is I have a secret desire. I don't want to work. I never have, really. I've HAD to work, I've even been a career woman, back in the 90s, clawing my way through middle management and actually pretty satsified for a while. 

I would love to be 'just a housewife'. I wouldn't care about being financially dependent on someone else, or not having much money to spend - it's not that I can splash money around at the moment anyway! I like the idea of my 'job' being to keep the house looking good, to do the washing and cooking and so on. It's work I do anyway and get satisfaction out of.

Just think, no more having to arrange and attend business breakfasts and networking events, no more meetings, no more stress. The hardest decision would be what to cook for dinner. I'd have time during the day to visit my Mum, who is currently not in the greatest of health, without feeling guilty about keeping clients waiting. I'd have the mental freedom to explore my creativity and put time into hobbies that could turn serious - writing and drawing/painting. 

There was a song in the 1980s called Everybody Wants to Work; I can't remember who sang it. But the chorus was along the lines of "Everybody wants to work, oh no, not me." And that's exactly how I felt and still feel. 

I guess I wasn't smart enough, pretty enough, sexual enough and outgoing enough to catch the attention of a wealthy man in my youth and make all my housewifey dreams come true; that's not to say I have self-esteem issues, it's a measure of the person I was then and realistically still am. I married in my forties a couple of years ago to a lovely self-employed divorcee who's almost as cash-strapped as I am. 

Am I alone in my housewifey dreams? Are there other women out there who feel obliged to do the corporate thing because it's expected of them? Germaine Greer and the early feminists fought hard so that women who wanted careers could have them, and bless them for that. But what of those who want to be old-fashioned? Is it wrong to want to be a housewife?

Is it just me or do other people feel uncomfortable networking?

First things first o kind reader. I arrange networking functions for a living. One of my clients is  a major Chamber of Commerce in my city. I love the behind the scenes stuff, designing the invitations, updating the website, capturing the RSVPs, but boy, after several years of it, I no longer look forward to the networking functions.

My problem is I've never been a party girl. During my childhood I could enjoy parties by taking a book and sitting in the corner reading it while the grownups chatted about boring stuff. Now I'm in my forties that's not an option. Sadly.

Even worse is that because I organise these things I'm obliged to work the room. Which is astonishingly hard for me as I'm shy and sociophobic. On the night I usually manage by chatting to folks I know or spending ages with the name tags welcoming people. Despite repeated training I can't get the hang of 'meeting people' and 'connecting' the way others can. I've met some serial networkers who are quite scary in their ambitious room-working. But I just can't do it that way myself. I get lots of invitations to networking events (other than the ones I organise) and turn 90% of them down. I just can't face it.

Now the big rule of having your own business is, these days, to get out there and network. This means (ugh) breakfast meetings - and in my view breakfast is a meal best eaten at home with or without your loved one and with the newspaper or a good novel, preferably the latter - and after hours meetings - which reek slightly of detention from the old school days; I'd much rather just be at home with that novel I didn't finish over breakfast. I deal with people non-stop over the phone and email all day; leaving my cosy home office for a face to face dose of the same can leave me depressed at the thought.

Surprisingly on the night I manage OK, provided I a) get enough to drink to see me through it and b) can nick outside for fag on my own to assist in the seeing-through process. Neither of which, shall we agree, is wonderful for one's health, but good for one's psyche.

So who else is out there who finds business life and networking a hard, hard slog? I can't be alone. There must be many of us who suffer for our business. Anyone? Or am I a lone nutter? :-)