The kind of pitch I’d love to make here cumulatively, but summed up in one post. Except I don’t have the caveat of a great “day job,” have no special reason to keep the part time job (which, after all, pays less in a week I once generated in a single day of the same hours), and am decreasingly geographically attached (much as I would be happy to and am increasingly free to work from home).
This brings up financial matters I had eventually expected to post about.
First, I have a bad habit of underrating myself and what I should charge. That’s partly a matter of “the ends keep moving.” My notion of what is good pay was formed in the late seventies. A person can no more than scrape by on that now. I just made part time for the year more than I made full time in 1991. That’s partly a matter of self-esteem, such that I can’t imagine people wanting to pay me real money, or possibly even anything. That sense can be there inexplicably at the same time I am fully aware that I am superlative at whatever skill or task. Sometimes it’s a matter of not knowing what to charge or ask, as well as to being frugal myself. That is, for work I do, I might not be able to imagine paying what I ought to be charging, since I might not be willing or able to pay that much. Which can be because I think nothing of the things I can do, not valuing them personally because they are no big deal. People find it funny when what I find trivial and undervalue is something they can’t even comprehend. Then there are the actual cheapskates, and the fact that I take too much to heart others who wouldn’t dream of paying what I’m worth. I find it hard simply not to deal with them, move on to all the other fish in the sea.
Ah, that may have come out as a bit of a jumble. The fact is, I may have stayed/done better in that business, or succeeded subsequently, had I been less humble and more demanding with people. Both in terms of pay and in terms of insisting they do what needed to be done. The latter, if met with loss of client, would have been better for me than hanging in there. Like I’ve noted about failure, lessons learned. If not easily put into action.