Ugh, I hate Father's Day. I love my father but i hate this bloody holiday. i don't need nor want the greeting card industry to dictate when and how I appreciate him. So today I have to drag my ass up to Pickering and buy him something (i'm going with whiskey) because damn Hallmark says i should. You know i'm a cynic, but not nearly as much as my Dad. But for such a cynic he has quite surprisingly bought into this whole thing. *sigh*.
For the last two days I've been working on a proposal document for a government thing. Basically the province has a competition every three years for ad agencies, it allows you to get on their roster. That means that for the next three years only those agencies on that roster can get work from ANY department or ministry of the government.
It's a longshot; I mean there are 193 agencies competing, but worth it if we win. the smallest category of job the give out is 'up to $25,000'. even a few of those would be nice. This is part of a new approach or comittment I'm taking lately. It has two parts, one is that i don't want to deal with people for whom $1000 is a lot of money, i want to deal with clients for whom $10,000 is NOT a lot. Secondly I want to deal with the kind of clients who stick around, or come back with more and more work. that's been harder to do of course, and will continue to be. But if i can start suckling the teat of government largesse, things might feel a bit different.
My whole thing with dealing with larger clients is not merely about greed. Oh sure desire for more money is part of it, but really it's about the amount of work i get to do as a ratio to how much time i spend dealing with the attendant bullshit of being self employed. The amount of time spent getting a $10,000 - $50,000 is really only about 2 or 3 times more than the time and energy spent getting a $1000 job. As well my rate of failure is about double for the larger jobs. Sounds bad, but if you do the math it's a shitload better. i"m getting a return of 10 to 50 times more for only about 2 to 4 tiimes the effort. Graph that out and you see the value.
This is all in an effort to finally get my business out of the 'technically bankrupt but he doesn't know it yet' category and into something more like 'providing a good living and occaisionally able to take holidays' level.
So wish me luck as I bid for my place at the trough.
Oh and the title of the post comes from the recent scandal with the federal government and their ad agencies. The short version is that the Liberal party spent a couple hundred million dollars on a sponsorship program that was mostly a way for them to funnel money to ad agencies that were well connected to the party (did their election ads for ex.) Given that the Liberals are now in power provicially and i'm about to win government work i want to get t-shirts printed saying:
"I'm a Liberal Government-connected ad agency, ask me about kick-backs."
You see the problem is that I work for myself.Of course there are great advantages to this kind of life. all the usual ones you'd imagine: working in your underpants, your time is your own, you answer to no-one etc. But there are disadvantages too. �One of which is that you've got all this time and nobody to distract you from yourself.
I've found that my mind is always going at 100%, and when there is nothing to think about, and nobody to occupy it, then it thinks about 'important' things. And that's what can be worrisome - that's how you get insomnia in the middle of the day.
So it's been a while since i blogged, i suck so shoot me. anyway nothing of great importance to report, here. Usual shit really. But last night i was watching tv and saw a video with an absolutely cute boy singing he's norwegian of all things but sings like a cross betwee Hawkesly Workman and Rufus Wainwright. boy with guitar and hurt feelings kinda stuff. check him out Sondre Lerche (yah doesn't sound sexy in English does it?). www.sondrelerche.com great stuff. i downloaded some (bad marky), but will likely buy some too. he's good and damned cute.
summer seems to be here in Toronto now. the weather is utterly FINE outside. warm sunny, a bit cool in the shade. the real oppressive heat hasn't arrived yet. I went out last week to the island and saw again that view of the downtown core that just really is breathtaking. it's easy to be in the middle and be ovverwhelmed with the height and the hot concete and tarmac and glass-ness of it all, but when you get away a bit and look back you see how amazing it is. Iv'e always found massiveness and human-created bigness to be impressive and beautiful. beautiful for how it makes me feel not for any kind of aethetic really. something ugly is beautiful too if it's just huge and proudly WHAT IT IS. Toronto's like that from half a kilometre away.
Nothing much to blog about today. I went to an info session where the government of Ontario is allowing ad agencies to get into their �pool� of vendors. It was a bit intimidating to be in a room with a lot (all) of the largest agencies in Toronto and a pantload of the others. 193 in all we were told. So now we�ve got less than two weeks to come up with a submission to get on the roster.
It would be great to do considering how much work it could mean. Even a tiny chunk of a small project could double my billings J needless to say I�m pretty pleased at the prospect.
But given the recent scandal about ad agencies and the federal government I was thinking of getting t-shirts printed if we get on the roster saying �I�m work for a government ad agency, as me about kick-backs!� but I don�t know if that would be prudent.
Weekend is here. I�m helping dad install a fence tomorrow. Bad news is he starts early, good news is he�ll be asleep by noon. Oh and the new bath-house opened up last weekend. It could be fun to visit. Just for research sake I think. Really.
Um, cute boy of the week is this fella:
http://www.eegmusic.com/gallery/gallery_popup.php?photo_id=2240
He�s a Chinese Canadian pop/rapper type. Good singer. But more importantly he�s adorable.
For the last two years there�s been a guy in love with me. I mean a guy other than the one I�m married(ish) to. Married like living with, owning a house with, fake marriage ceremony in Las Vegas with but not technically now that it�s legal married to in that sense. Make sense? Good. Now, about the other guy. You already know I�m in an open relationship. Which means I get to play around. Think of eating your cake and having it too. Like that. Anyway two or three years ago I met a guy and we played. But we also became friends. Good friends. And he�s sweet. And well one thing led to another and our feelings became a bit stronger than they oughta be.
We�d crossed the line from friends with benefits to, well, we were dating. And it was pretty clear that he was falling for me. It sounds so damn�d arrogant to say �he was in love with me� but he displayed all the behaviors of someone who is, so I assumed. And as much as I�ve tried not to let on to him what I feel, the feelings were a bit mutual.
After a few enforced �we can�t see each others� we have been able to hang out a lot more lately without any serious overtones of weirdness. I think at times he�d date me given the chance, but he seemed to be past the point of hoping or thinking that such an eventuality was likely. Oh and we stopped shagging over a year ago.
So things are going well, we�re friends. He�s a really cool guy and I�m glad we�ve become friends. Recently he�s met a guy. This fella is attractive, employed, nice (from what I know), and most importantly is into my friend. So they�ve gotten all ga-ga even though it�s a long distance relationship (Toronto-Calgary) and have vested each other a billion times in the last two months alone.
So it does look like my friend is moving on. And I�m happy for him. I really am. I�m encouraging him and supporting him and I really, really want him to do what is best for him. Because waiting around for me is just daft right?
But this morning the thought occurred to me that as much as I am happy for him. As much as I wouldn�t leave my partner for him. As much as I know that even if I was single tomorrow we�d never date. I am still a little sad he�s moved on.
There is something terribly flattering about having someone in like/love/lust with you. Devotion is pretty nice to be around. For a whole bunch of reasons I know that there�s something different about our relationship now. No matter what comes of his new relationship, I know he doesn�t need me in quite the same way.
And for that I�m sad.
Yesterday I went to a meeting with someone who had already bugged me. She's a designer that wanted me to sit in with her meeting with her client about some copywriting. She had bugged me on a prior project by just being, well, a dick. She gave me 'notes' on the copy I was writing for her client. Now of course if she feels that she has to say something about the copy because her client is not being served, fair enough, but really, she actually said to me: "too many adjectives."
Er, thanks.
Then she went and told the client the same thing. Clients have soft little brains that are easily lead-able. And she led them. *Sigh*
Anyway, long story short I'm already a tad fed up with her, but she calls me into a potential money situation, so who am I to say no right? Only she just continues to do things that bug my shit. Like showing me the proposal she wrote (so I'd know what the fuck the meeting was about) but deleting the estimate page so I won't find out how much she's billing (like I give a fuck as long as I�ve been paid).
And she said "remember don't give them your business card" which is standard operating procedure if you�re subbing out work to another contractor, you don�t want him to bring his card in and confuse your client. But you see, I already KNOW THIS because I did not just open my business last Wednesday!!
Then. THEN at the end of the meeting while I�m chatting and being charming with the client, putting their minds at ease after 2 hours of telling them why their ideas are shite, I made the comment that they should trust us because "I'd make everything sound great and the designer would make them pretty." flippant and of course a bit self deprecating but nice and harmless right? Well not according to her who just gave me what for "I do a lot more than just that you know, and I don't appreciate those comments.... insulting.... blah blah fucking blah."
So I just gave her a quote on the work. And I made it large enough to choke a rhino. Either she'll tell me to fuck off (I hope).
Or she'll pay it.
Either way I�ll feel fine.
Right, well if you read the blog you'd know that I'm a 38 year old freelance writer with a dog and a husband from Toronto. You'd also know that I've just moved lock, stock and DVD collection, to Hong Kong. Eric, (my loving hubby), Lucky (the Bichon, still in Toronto but soon to be here), and I are starting a new life (for a while anyway) in the sweaty tropics