After getting home this evening I had long talk with Michele about the rate situation. It felt good to rant and rave and let all my emotions run free. After a good venting I was able to see my situation more clearly. Along the way, Michele made several excellent points that helped bring me back into balance.
She pointed out that we had suspected this rate cut was coming months ago. Towards that end we reorganized our finances and prepared ourselves to live on less monthly income. Sure this rate cut smarts, but it isn’t the end of the world.
Michele also reminded me that although this feels personal in the moment it really isn’t about me. No one sat down and decided to make my life miserable. If I pursue that feeling I’ll only end up hurting myself.
The change in my rate status doesn’t mean that any change needs to occur in my life. Running around screaming the sky is falling isn’t going to solve anything, and it may end up hurting me. Sitting back and letting this situation, and my emotions, find equilibrium is a much better way to take care of me.
So maybe the boats and helicopters from earlier aren’t meant to take me away from this situation, but rather to rescue me from making a mountain out of a molehill.
There is an old joke about a man trapped by a flood who refuses rescue in three boats, and later a helicopter. His reasoning is that God will take care of him. After he drowns and reaches heaven, God says he shouldn’t be here. The man says I waited for you to take care of me. God replies, I sent you three boats and a helicopter.
It occurs to me that the latest rate reduction being forced upon my by my sole client is, if not the helicopter, the third boat. In the three years since I have held this engagement there has been an unending stream of stress. If my contract wasn’t up in the air, payments on my invoices was delayed for months. If payments were on time, the project was in jeopardy of being cancelled.
I have doggedly weathered the increasing flood waters here. I took a 10 percent cut in rate after the first year here. I nearly went bankrupt trying to survive slow payments during the second year. This past summer was filled with worry about whether I’d even have a contract or not. And I dug a deep hole in back taxes with the IRS that will be difficult to escape. Now, less than a month after getting a new contract, unilateral cuts are being required by the State. In my case a cut of 35%.
I think that the TAO, or God, has other things in mind for me. Staying here is not going to work. If I insist upon staying in the face of this third boat, with the helicopter off in the distance, I deserve to drown in the quagmire that is consulting for the State of Illinois.
It is time to accept the suggestion to leave.
Today I finally saw the third and final installment of The Matrix movies. I had studiously avoided reading any critiques beforehand so I could measure its merits for myself. Still, I was aware that there were a significant number of people (based on weblogs I read) that were disappointed in the finale.
One of the catch phrases from the trailers was, “everything that has a beginning has an end.” Only this end wasn’t really an end, was it? The machines are still in control of most of humanity, we don’t know if Neo is alive or dead, and the representations of good and evil, the Oracle and the Architect, have reached an impasse, or perhaps Mexican standoff.
Like many people I was utterly wowed by the original movie. Not just the special effects but the whole story line and philosophy. And I agree that the noir look added greatly to the film. Like all bridge movies (and all trilogies have them by definition) Reloaded left me hungry for more. Revolutions delivered a good action movie, with an hour or more of “The Battle for Zion”, but it didn’t tie up very well the story lines of the Merovingian, the Architect, or the Oracle.
One comment I read likened this movie to a world-wide ctrl-alt-delete. I feel this is an apt analogy. But it leaves me wondering, what happens in the Matrix: Rebooted?
I am feeling as if I am hanging by a thread over a bottomless pit today. My contract with the State of Illinois is being “renegotiated” to a lower rate at the State’s behest. I put negotiated in quotes as all indications are that the State will present a new rate and the negotiation will be whether I stay on or not.
It has been extremely difficult to be here since this initiative was announced. All of the consultants I work with are upset to different degrees, and any conversation breaks down into tying to outdo the other in descriptions of how awful and unlawful this whole mess is in their opinion. We all agree that this sucks, but none of us are getting our own emotions validated in any meaningful manner.
I feel totally out of control and helpless in the face of this situation. There aren’t any other jobs in this city, or even this part of the state, that would equal half of my current income. Turning this rate reduction down would mean relocating to another city. Thinking about all that would entail leaves me next to tears. I worked so hard this summer to accept the realities of having a contract with the State, and when I was granted a new one in early October I thought I was past the worst of this situation.
Taking the reduced rate may be an option, provided it isn’t so one-sided a reduction as to be impossible. I have no idea how to prepare myself for hearing the number, or making the decision. Sure, I have built a spreadsheet and I know to the penny what each percentage point costs me financially. Only I am no longer just a financially driven person. How I feel, and how I view myself is far more important that mere dollars.
Hmm, if that were completely true I’d be able to take whatever rate is offered and be happy I have a job. I guess there is still a piece of me that wants to be valued monetarily. Like it or not, income is a measure in our society. One that I have been immersed in my whole adult life. For all the growth and progress I’ve made in learning how to take care of me and be true to myself, I still am clinging to some significant rocks.
When we moved to Illinois for this contract I had visions of saving lots of money and being financially independent. I know now that these visions were driven by my false-personality. My truth is that I don’t need a lot of money, and having the ability to earn it has brought nothing but difficulties and dangers. We are worse off in many regards than when I was an employee, with no real advantage to show for the perceived freedoms of self-employment.
As an employee I gave up control of many things, but I kept my sense of self largely intact. Now that I have learned to meet my emotional and spiritual needs outside of the work environment, my sense of self would be even stronger as an employee. Working for myself has twisted my whole approach to me around. I am not a company, even though I play one for work. I lost my hard gained sense of self amid all the flash and circumstance of being self-employed.
Either I figure out to be myself again, even though I have a professional persona that is vastly different than the real me, or I need to return to a more structured environment that relives me of the employment concerns so I can return to me.
This isn’t about money, although that is the language that gets used to discuss the problem. This is about being able to stand up to the “authority” figure and say, “I am content with who I am, I don’t need your validation.” This is a growth opportunity for me. If I can find my through this latest bit of falseness back to my truth I will be able to move on from here without needing to repeat this lesson.
I now understand what it is I am to learn from all this falderal with contracts and rates and self-employment. External labels, whether applied by some authority figure or self-imposed, are meaningless. The. Only. Thing. That. Matters. Is. What. I. Think.
I am not a contractor, nor consultant. I am not a programmer, or project team leader. I. Am. Mark.
I’ve completed an extensive overhaul of my site. I believe everything is working now, except for the track back link for each posting. Since I’ve never had a track back this is not a major concern.
I used a design from the CSS Zen Garden called “utilitarian” as the base for this design. Originally it didn’t make use of columns, but I refactored it with the help of the Layout-o-matic site.
I hope you like it as much as I do; please let me know if anything works especially well, or even if it doesn’t.
Leslie Veen was one of many who talked about the recent signing of the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban.
I completely agree with her statement, “I find it striking that not one of those pictured will be directly affected by the law they just enacted. How is that representational government?”
Whether you support the current administration’s policies or not, you must realize that the neo-conservatives and the ultra-right Christian coalition have an agenda to rework this county, and indeed the world, in their image. They are using fear, uncertainty, and doubt to divide us and steal our democracy.
If we the people don’t get out and vote and express our displeasure with our “elected” government we may well lose the ability to control it forever.
Thanks to Matt Haughey, Leonard Lin, and this Apple document my Powerbook G4 (867 MHz) is once again running at 867 MHz.
I just last evening upgraded to 10.2.8 figuring that all the quirks have been flattened by now. Silly me. Less than 24 hours later I read that 10.2.8 may have reset my cpu frequency to a figure 2/3rds of its rated speed.
Running the sysctl hw.cpufrequency command in the Terminal I discovered to my dismay that my CPU was running at a mere 667 MHz. Following Apple’s directions I reset my PMU and restarted my machine. Once again I am running at a full 867 MHz.
The month of October saw a slight increase in the amount of spam I’m getting. For the month I had 6,312 spams, up from last month’s 5009. My total for the year is now 64,023.
My average is now 6,402.3 per month and 210.6 per day. My new estimate for the year is 76,600. Wow.
Last month I talked about setting up a Linux server and using it as, among other things, a mail server. I haven’t done anything towards this goal. I guess the daily pain of sifting through the junk filtered messages for false positives hasn’t reached my breaking point.
CNN is reporting that Voyager 1 has left the solar system.
Well not completely. But it is believed to be in the region of the heliopause. With another 17 years or so of power on-board scientists should get a chance to discover what’s out there.
Can you imagine that a man made object is now traveling at 1,000,000 miles per day and is 90 times farther away from us than the sun? Incredible.
Michele and I spent yesterday morning cooking both a pot of spaghetti sauce and a crock pot of swiss steak. Originally we had planned on preparing and having swiss steak for dinner. It is one of our favorite meals and we hadn’t made it in too long.
We use a 2-3 pound eye roast, cut into 3/4 inch slices. Yesterday’s roast was a good 3 pounds so we sliced two filets off the thick end to have as steak later in the week. The rest of the slices are pounded with a meat tenderizer and then dredged through flour, salt, and pepper. I pound them again lightly after the dredging to make sure the floor really sticks. The meat is browned in oil and then added to the crock pot. While I’m doing the meat prep, Michele dices an onion, a green pepper, a rib or two of celery, some baby carrots, and 3-5 gloves of garlic. These get sautéed in the same oil as the meat and then are added to the pot. I de-glaze the frying pan with a can of beef stock, which is then poured into the pot.
I add a can of stewed tomatoes and a handful (2-3 tablespoons) of brown sugar. Of course salt and pepper are used through out to season each layer of the mix. Put it on low for a good 8 hours and you have a wonderfully tender, flavorful meal. Perfect with mashed potatoes and gravy made from the liquid in the pot.
When Michele was nearly done with the vegetables for the swiss steak she suggested that we go ahead and make a pot of spaghetti sauce to have later in the week. Since the swiss steak was now nearly on auto-pilot I thought this was a fabulous idea. While she started dicing more green pepper, onion and garlic, I completed the swiss steak preparations and then started grinding the meat for our sauce. We buy good quality ground meat from the store and re-grind it at home. The consistency is smoother, and we enjoy the texture of the meat more.
Once the veggies are ready I sauté them in a little oil with salt and pepper. These are set aside and the meat is browned, again with salt and pepper. After draining the meat the veggies are re-added. We use a 14.5 oz can of diced tomatoes, and a similar sized can of tomato sauce, along with a small can of tomato paste for the liquid in the sauce.
For seasoning we add anise seed, oregano, italian seasoning, cumin, cayenne, bay leaf, salt, pepper, and a dash or two of sugar. We let it simmer for a couple hours before cooling it and storing in the fridge for later consumption.
Have the house filled with all these wonderful cooking aromas was enticing and wonderful. Knowing that we have several meals already prepared for the week felt liberating. We we both in the right space to do some serious cooking yesterday, our energy was light and playful. The resulting food was spectacular. Our swiss steak dinner was one of the finest we have every had or made.
I can’t wait for spaghetti tonight!