Today is one of those days.

Today I have a kid home and a kid who was late getting ready for school. The kid who’s home is boooooored and I am thinking of locking my office door if I am interrupted one more time. The kid at school just called to say—of course!—that my signature is needed on some forms which I already signed but have mysteriously gone missing, so could I please just swing by to sign a new set, pretty please?

I had a doctor’s appointment this morning, which meant that I saw my husband briefly as I got home from that and he left for work. (Thank goodness he was able to stay home with the kid while I went, at least.) The kid who’s home has a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, after which we will likely have to run over to the hospital for some additional diagnostics, which means I already know my afternoon is toast.

There’s a stack of work on my desk right next to today’s “To Do” list, which has seventeen items on it. So far I’ve completed… two of them. It’s past lunchtime and I just got around to having breakfast.

Some days my flexible schedule feels like it’s trying to strangle me.
Read the rest of this entry

I’m going to tell you right up front that this may be a little ranty. (Rants in my pants!) I’m angry and I’m not going to try to hide that. I’m angry because it aggravates me when people who are supposedly my colleagues do things that sell themselves short, and—by extension—reflect badly on our industry. It upsets me when someone makes a poor choice, sure, but it enrages me when those poor choices start coloring how potential clients might view me. To the people who respond to this stuff with “Why does someone else’s behavior even matter to you?” I say this: It matters to me because it affects the expectations projected onto me. No man is an island, they say, and I’m here to say no freelancer lives in a sanitized bubble. What you do does indeed sometimes affect my livelihood. So you’d better believe it matters to me.

There are two (completely separate) issues stuck in my craw this week that I think bear further examination. Maybe you’ll take a look and disagree with me, and that’s fine. For me, both issues really go to the heart of what it means to have integrity. And if you’ve been reading me for any time at all, you know that I believe you can’t make it in this business for very long without your integrity; you may get by for a while, but eventually it will make you unhireable and/or unreadable.
Read the rest of this entry

Perhaps the lesson most firmly driven home to me since beginning my life as a business entity is that I am my business and I need to conduct myself accordingly. My behavior and my work are inseparable, in the eyes of the public. That’s the blessing and the curse of being a freelancer, I guess.

The corollary to this realization is that corporations don’t seem to feel any such similar obligation to provide top-notch service and behavior. Is it because there’s no regulating a business entity to that level once you have more employees? Is it because they just don’t care? Is it because they can’t help it? I don’t know. But I do know that since going into business for myself I have a lot less patience for the business snafus of companies that should do better.

Which brings us to my business banking. Unfortunately.
Read the rest of this entry

Just about everyone has a story about the job where the boss was completely unreasonable, right? For most of us, that story goes with a job we had in high school or college, when we maybe didn’t know how to handle such a thing, but I’m always amazed at the number of grown, competent adults who carry around war stories of the Job With The Nutty Boss. Part of the lure of freelancing, of course, is that you’re essentially your own boss, and you also have the freedom to pick and choose with whom you’d like to work.

But. Being a freelancer doesn’t somehow protect one from having a run-in with a difficult client. And it’s easy enough to say, “Not me! I only choose to work with people I really click with, and I’ve never had a problem!” But I guarantee that if you freelance long enough, you’ll find yourself dealing with some less-than-optimal relationships, one way or another.

Remember how I make tax mistakes so that you don’t have to? I also deal with Crazy so that you don’t have to. Pull up a chair.
Read the rest of this entry

We’ve arrived at that magical time of year when I typically sit down to write my annual post about how school is out and the children are making me insane. Except that this year things are a little different, and that’s not the post I need to write; for one thing, this was a particularly difficult school year for all of us (for a variety of reasons), and so the arrival of summer vacation feels like a much-needed exhalation and relief, for a change. And the truth, too, is that with each passing year my children becoming a bit more independent. Sure, we still have “Really, can you not find anything to do? I’m sure I can find something for you…” moments, but at 12 and 10-and-a-half, my days of playing referee and constant monitor are mostly over.

For another thing, right now the biggest distraction to my work comes not from the kids, but from my poor neurotic dog. I wrote yesterday on my personal blog about how apparently some sort of creature has made its way into the crawlspace underneath my office bathroom. And my dog—my poor, dear, 12-pounds-of-sentry pooch—is driving me insane.
Read the rest of this entry

What I am about to tell you is so completely ridiculous it would be totally depressing if it wasn’t, you know, actually funny. Like, not “ha ha” funny but “this is absurd” kind of funny. You know me; I have to find the humor to stave off the freak-outs.

Longtime Cornered Office readers know that I blog about taxes a lot. With each passing year and with each step I take to organize my business, I’m always convinced that next year I’m finally going to get it right, by gum. I mean, sure, I had to make a lump sum payment in 2007 because I’d failed to plan properly, but I did that, learned from it, and moved on. And then in 2007 I had an accountant and I’d made my estimated payments so, despite a few bumps, I was sure I’d gotten it right. I remained sure of that until I found out that my estimated payments were too low, and I ended up owing an even larger lump sum than the previous year (which was sort of adding insult to injury, as I’d been making payments throughout the year). But it was okay! Because 2009 was going to be my year.

You know where I’m going with this, right?
Read the rest of this entry

There are many perks to the various jobs I do, including (but not limited to): Getting to work from home, getting to work in my pajamas, sometimes getting to do great things for charity as part of my job, having a fair amount of creative freedom, and sometimes getting free stuff.

Yeah, I said it. Sometimes I get free stuff. And that’s definitely a perk, I’m not going to lie.

Free stuff is tricky, of course, if you have concerns about maintaining integrity, which I do. There are bloggers who make poor decisions in the face of free stuff, and I never want to be among them. (Side note: Go read Susan Getgood’s excellent recap of the recent FTC guideline changes for bloggers, if you haven’t. Go. Now. I’ll wait.)

I’ve had a lot of fun with the various free things I’ve been lucky enough to receive, right up until I was selected to be a Frigidaire Super Influencer.
Read the rest of this entry

I love my children. I love my children. Ilovemychildrenanddon’treallywanttokillthem.

Ahem.

So the thing about my home office is that I used to share it with my husband. When we first moved into this house a few years ago, we packed the room to the gills with our stuff—his desk on that wall, mine on this one, and bookshelves and boxes galore everywhere else. I enjoyed sharing with him (I am rather fond of the guy, after all, and he makes an ideal officemate because he’s quiet and tidy but also fun to be around), but we really didn’t have enough space. And so this summer, we rearranged some other things in the house and my husband moved his office upstairs.

The good news is that now he has enough room for all of his stuff, and I have enough room for all of my stuff.

The bad news is that all of the new-found extra space in my office is rapidly being filled up with child detritus.
Read the rest of this entry

Although I enjoy hanging around with my family and friends, I am, by nature, a rather solitary person. Loneliness is a common freelancer’s lament—long days in the home office, all alone, can start to feel like a lifetime in a cave—but for the most part I relish the quiet.

But I got to thinking that a dog would be awesome, because I’m here all the time, and it would give me some companionship during the day and the kids would be delighted to have a pet again (we haven’t had a dog since they were very small), and it all seemed like such a good idea. So the husband and I did our research and drove out to a rescue in the country and agreed to foster a particularly timid dog for two weeks. In two weeks we would see if he would come out of his shell and maybe be a good fit for our family.

Within three hours of getting him home, he bolted through the slats in the gate. That was four days ago, and the good news is that the dog is fine; he’s lounging around our neighborhood and when he’s not somewhere we can see him, the neighbors are calling to report he’s in their yards eating their cat food. The bad news is that no human can get within 10 feet of him.
Read the rest of this entry

So, remember when I was agonizing over portable wireless, and whether or not I really needed it, and perhaps even wondering if I would ever learn how to take a real vacation where I, you know, stop working.

Honestly, I was still on the fence. My husband was researching campgrounds that offer wireless internet. I was still thinking that $60/month was a little unnecessary, deductible business expense or not.

And then it happened. I read about the new MiFi portable Hot Spot. Now—to be fair—this is really no different for my uses than getting a wireless card for my laptop. It does exactly the same thing. Except that it also allows for up to five users to get online at a time, which suddenly made it seem more reasonable. Because both my husband and I could use it. And the kids, even. It’s for the family while I work, really.

Also? It is extremely shiny. Ahem.
Read the rest of this entry