Back but for a different reason

[ClingingToHope]

Sotto, the research idea is excellent. I will use that.

Interesting week.

On Monday, I got an email from a company that I did some work for back in April. They needed me for a short writing project.

I went in, got the assignment and finished it in two hours the next day. It should have taken 30 minutes, but I had to do some research on pianos.

That led to another email and another assignment on Wednesday. I stopped in and this should take two days. So that's all found money for July. Also, the work I did back in April is finally getting picked up by some publications -- which means I fulfilled all my original obligations.

The owner of the company was there and we sat down to discuss ... future projects. Back in April, we talked about beefing up the company's blog. He has a grander vision though. He wants to make his website the go-to place for small business owners and entrepreneurs in the Midwest.

Now we're talking. I've long thought about what I'd do if I created a website from scratch.

One caveat though. He doesn't want to bring someone on staff. He wants someone to manage it ... who will take some of the risk and get some of the reward on the back end.

Nailing him down on exactly what he was proposing was impossible.

So I went home and came up with an editorial plan ... again, I'd been thinking about something like this for a while. It's a very good plan. By using publicly available records, you can compile a list of entrepreneurs to talk to over several states without the need of a huge staff. And I can pull it off. I sent it to him and proposed talking next week.

I understand where he's coming from. He doesn't want to commit a huge amount for an idea that may produce no extra revenue. But I have bills to pay. I don't need to be on staff. I can be paid through my company, but I can lower my per-hour costs only to a certain point ... and I'll need some kind of time commitment. What if one of these applications leads to something but now I'm starting this new venture. I could turn down a solid job for something that gets dumped in three months.

I'm jumping ahead again. At the very least, it was exciting to get some new work and to talk about a bigger project. I emailed a copy of the proposal to a friend who used to run the small business development center in town. He liked it. He's running his own business development firm and he said some time this summer he's going to contract with me for writing work.

I also umpired seven baseball games this week and picked up two more for next week. So things keep happening.

I have to continue to fight the feelings of bitterness and jealousy. A former softball teammate had a son in one of the games I was umpiring Wednesday. He's the CEO of a company 30 minutes north. Last winter, they had a writing opening. It didn't pay great, but I was overqualified for it and considering he ran it I thought I was a shoo-in. Instead, the person running the department didn't hire me because she "heard about how things ended" for me at my old newspaper job.

1) things ended fine. I was let go, but I didn't argue. It was a long time coming. I survived five rounds of cutbacks. I shook hands with the people who let me go, hugged everyone goodbye and left. I knew it was coming.

2) they shouldn't be talking about me anyway.

Back to my former teammate. Just seeing him and then thinking about getting turned down for another job I'm overqualified for just ... burned me up. I waved to him but didn't go over to talk. I didn't want the "so what's going on" question.

There's other stuff. It was a fairly busy week for an unemployed person. But I should get some sleep.