Business Progression

This week has actually been pretty positive when it comes to sorting out things for my own company again.

As mentioned earlier in the week, I had a look at an office to rent – and signed up for it. Annoyingly, it’s not available until mid-February, but that should still work out fine for what I want/need. It’s only a little place, but it’ll give me the time, space and office I want, and allow me to do a lot of other stuff too.

At the same time, I chased up the farce that has been the application for my company business account. It’s a long story, and one I won’t bother with ’til I know more, but it’s been bloody annoying. Standard bank incompetence, and hardly a great way to get business in, but well, we’ll see.

What with those achievements, plus the car MOT and so on, it all feels pretty positive! Most unnatural and surprising…


Solo – Holidays

As has been observed on here many times, I’m shit at taking holidays – and time-off in general, really. This isn’t something that’s related to the bankruptcy etc. (although it’s made it even less easy to do over the last couple of years) as much as it’s related to being a contractor, and to being chronically disorganised. And of course, to being single.

As a contractor, you can’t help but realise/recognise that time off on holiday is bloody expensive. It’s not just the cost of whatever you decide to do, it’s also the fact that it’s a week you could be working – and contractors don’t get a leave/holiday entitlement. So effectively it’s even more expensive, because not only are you paying money out for the break, but you’re also aware that it’s a week of money you’re not earning.

Even for someone as non-materialistic as me, that makes it into a significant dollop of money. Made even more so by being a sole wage-earner, and thus entirely self-reliant for finances.

The other side (for me, at least) is the whole thing of being single. I don’t care that I’m going to different places on my own, but it’s more about the simple knowledge that it’s still ‘just me’. I’m fully aware this makes no sense to anyone else – and I’m hard-pushed to explain it in writing – but there we go.

I suppose some of it is that – unless, I guess, one goes to a B&B/Hotel – I’m still doing the cooking for myself, doing what I want, going where I want, and it’s not really all that different to how things are anyway.

I’m aiming to look at all this a bit differently in 2015, and to take off on a couple of breaks, but also to disappear off for weekends etc. One of those is already organised – a break to Edinburgh in mid-April, when the next contract finishes.  It’s ‘only’ a weekend, but will also involve a couple of other things I want to do in the area, and I’m actually really looking forward to it. Plus, of course, being ‘just’ a weekend, it doesn’t lose me any working time, which makes things a lot easier to bear.

I’m looking at some others too – some for new visits to places I know and haven’t seen in a long time, and others for completely new areas/places, which should be fun.


Getting Prepared

Over the weekend, I was talking to a couple of people, one of whom had had a couple of serious illnesses/medical issues in a short period of time.

It made me think about my own situation, and I realised (OK, I kind-of knew, but hadn’t thought about it properly) how screwed I would be if I were to be hit by long-term illness, or anything serious that required me to not be working for a while.

So I’m adding a goal to the list for the coming 12 months – have a backup plan and finances.

Ideally, I’m going to aim at having the financial backup that would cover me for at least three months of not working. I was pretty much there earlier this year, but then events conspired, and it’s back to zero. But that’s the plan. I know how much I would need, and what I need to do.

Interestingly, once I’m past 2015 it should be easier. At the moment, and for the next year, a significant portion of salary goes to payments from the bankruptcy. They come to a close at the end of 2015, and my current plan is that I’ll continue to take that money from salary, but instead of going to the Receiver, it’ll go to an ISA or secondary bank-account. I know I can do without that money, so it shouldn’t be an issue to keep on not having it.

Anyway, that’s the goal. Three months of funds, just in case the shit hits the fan.


Signs of Life

Now that work-based sanity appears to have made a return, things are coming back to a more even keel – both life-wise and fiscally.

For me, the first major sign of this came this weekend, which went thusly…

On the Saturday, I went to meet up with friends in Nottingham. When I left home, it was a decent day, so I didn’t bother checking if I had a jacket/coat with me. (You can see where this is going already, can’t you?)

By the time I was halfway up the M1, it was absolutely slashing down, waterlogged roads the lot. “Bugger”, thought I, “but at least I’ve a jacket or coat in the boot”.

Once I got to Nottingham, it was still pissing down, but I parked up, and opened the boot. Jacket, there was none. Coat, there was none. Fuck it, thought I.

Due to being (as always) pathologically early, I still had the chance to go and buy a new jacket, so I did.

And that was the sign of being OK again. It wasn’t a worry, I knew I had the available money. I could afford this extra unexpected expense, and it didn’t mean I was concerned about what’d happen at the end of the month, what would be needed to counteract this item.

It’s still annoying, because if there’s something I really didn’t need, it’s another bloody jacket. I don’t even wear them most of the time. But needs must when the devil drives, or when the clouds open. It’s one of those things, a bit annoying, but better to have a day of not being soaking wet and enjoying things far less as a result.

But it was positive for showing the process of recovery after the shitty job…


A Long Five Years

While I was looking back through D4D™ and what happened when, I found the category for the “Five Year Plan”, which started in – um – 2006, to go from 35 to 40.  And now I’m 43 and still using it.

Oops.

So anyway, it’s going to stay as a tag/category, but the goalposts are changing a bit. (Well, they’ve already changed, as I’ve been using it for three years past the original target) It’s going to take me through another two years now, to 45.

I’ve a nagging feeling I’ve written about extending the timeline before, but I can’t find it right now.Hey ho.

Along the way of that plan though, lots has changed. When it started, life was heading in a particular direction, and since then everything has altered pretty radically. Indeed, I don’t think there’s a single part of the original plans or intentions that has stood the test of time, or remains in place.

There’s still a lot of things I want to do, and things I’m working towards. There’ve been some savage roadhumps along the way, at least one of which doesn’t actually complete until the end of 2015. However, I do feel it’s generally going in a positive direction, and we’ll see where things end up.


Stasis

This year has – as I’ve written before – been a bit weird. In some ways it’s all been very changeable and flexible, but in others it’s felt very static and fixed.

I think a lot of that has to do with where I’m living, and the fact that I haven’t moved in nearly three years. For me, that’s a long time. Additionally, I know that I’ll be in the same place now (unless there’s some major changes I can’t yet foresee) until at least this time next year.

Three and a half years in the same place will actually be the longest I’ve been in any one house since I first moved away from home (which is pretty much a quarter-century now) – by then it’ll even have exceeded the Norfolk place, which was the previous record-holder.

It would be more of a concern for me if I hadn’t also been changing jobs – I usually find I’m either stable (or at least stable by my standards) in work, or in location, but rarely both at the same time.  During the bankruptcy period was the closest I came to being stable at both, although that was because everything else in life was up in the air, so the stability of location and job was A Good Plan.

On a more practical level, moving right now would’ve been more problematic than I’d like. Because of the work-based changes and issues, funding a move would’ve been a challenge. It makes sense to stay put. I think that might be some of the issue, to be honest – that it feels more like I can’t move, which isn’t a good place to be.

Now though, I don’t know. Even with the changes of work – and they have been many – I feel a bit rooted, a bit static. I’m sure I’ll address it and fix it- or at least find a way to reduce the play of that in my head- but for now it’s just a bit odd, a bit of that old scratch at the back of my head that it’s time to be moving on.

This time next year though, things may well be different…


Renewal

This month is renewal month for my car insurance. Always iniquitous, this time they’re really taking the piss.

After two years with the same company, with no claims, and no need to contact them at all, they’ve *raised* my premium – and not by a small amount. For no good reason that I can see, they’re trying to charge me no less than £30 *a month* more.

Amusingly (if you find sheer profiteering cuntishness to be amusing) they’ve also quoted me via an insurance comparison website at *half* what I’m currently paying.

Needless to say, I’ll be moving. And I’m really looking forward to the call where I tell the current set of shitbags why I won’t be renewing with them.