Our First Month in the Green
Things have been going along nicely (touch wood) on the work front. I’m almost working constantly now on government contract and have more interface design / template development work lined up on the whiteboard for days when the slack might allow other project work. The upside is the general business all of this involves - wake up early and dress up for the corporate enviroment, long day in the office, bus home after dark and barely make it into the loungeroom by 8.30pm to iron tomorrow’s clothes. An hour after they’re ironed I’m in bed and out like a light. And its probably the first time that I can recall where the income has been significantly in the green.
My final unit of the Bachelor of Computing is now relegated to the odd lunchtime meeting and weekends. We’re a team of five now refined down to a team of four as our project manager had to withdraw this semester due to family concerns. So, lo and behold, I’ve picked up that baton too and now hold the labels of project manager and marketing manager.
We’re slightly disadvantaged as well because our first project - an online interactive learning application for cardiovascular disease - wound down at the end of last semester due to a limited potential for academic marks. In layman’s terms - not enough work for five people. So we’re now working for a local NPO rebuilding their current ad-hoc information system into an online database driven website with various levels of user access and interaction. The client runs a volunteer service for older and disabled people who can no longer maintain their gardens, the volunteers either help as garden mates or as peer educators.
I’m enjoying the lifestyle adjustment to increased business and purpose as much as the lucrative pockets of ready cash that seem to have rained in lately. There’s enough to actually live on for a change (no thanks to being impoverished by being a student for so long). I was never someone to sit around watching the grass grow (without a couple of whiskeys, at least).
