Tuesday, March 27, 2007

More Things I'm Noticing About Working For Myself

It's kind of busy here at Katie James Central, and I've been noticing a few more things about working for myself:
  • I'm recycling! Never before have I printed on the back of scrap printing paper, but now that I'm paying the Staples bill, I'm flipping those pages and feeding them through the machine. Feels really good anyway, and I wish I had done this long ago. The recycling bug spread to my kitchen, where I will now be a willing New York recycler by putting two trash bags in my trash can. Normally I swear off recycling b/c of the extra effort involved in putting aside glass and cans, claiming that I had no extra room in my kitchen. But I really do. And that feels good, like I'm throwing away clean trash or something.
  • I'm in an Admin Whirlwind. It's not quite a cyclone, but luckily, I have invoices to create, and I just WISH that QuickBooks would embed itself into my head and computer, so that I could just wake up and know it. I've started reading the manual so as to know what to expect, but have not made the time to install it. You see, I do keep record of my times on jobs and expenses, so all of this is in excel sheets from January at least. I'd love to have a complete 2007 in QuickBooks, so may hire my trusty dog walker to do admin over a nice cup of tea or something.
  • Working with the cats and Gerdy and my iPod is fun, and emailing all day is fun. Phonecalls are fun. But it really does take me about 1 hour of direct communication with another person to get back into the swing of communicating to my fullest potential.
  • Maybe it's not such a good idea to totally work in gmail! It's been down for 3 hours! Plus, I need to get in the habit of sending from my katie-james.com account anyway. It does make a person look more legit, even if I've had it for 2 years and it all just forwards into gmail. This was confirmed by someone who I know on the phone today when I told her to email me at katie-james.com. She was excited that I had my own katie-james.com email...but I've always had it! So, lesson learned: don't rely on gmail. Have addresses/phonenumbers in a backup program, and use the email from my actual work web address. For the most part I have contact info in my Address program for Mac, but there are new ones that have not made it in yet.
  • Thank goodness I'm at home for when stoves get delivered. Sheesh. Didn't get a call about that delivery.
  • Thank goodness I bought my HP Laserjet 1300. That's all I have to say.
  • Also thank goodness I set up my merchant account long ago and ordered checks, so that check writing to people who need checks is simple from my business-only account. Also thank goodness I connected everything in my online banking.
Still on my list of things to do:
  • Start the new Katie-James.com website that includes website design and SEO tips.
  • Health insurance.
  • Confirm with TIAACref that I filled out my IRA papers correctly, then mail them. Just took them over to my former employment to have the accountant fill out the Former Employer page.
  • Get a fax machine.
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4 comments:

Anonymous said...

As a person who is working from home, can you believe how expensive insurance is? It's just crazy. At least with rent, I'm getting an immediate benefit--the roof over my head. But in the last ten years, my only medical problems have been going to the doctor to get X-rays on stuff that didn't turn out to be broken. So that's, what, $100,000 for two X-rays? Insane!

Unknown said...

Yes. It's really quite annoying. More annoying than flushing $1000 of rent down the drain to a landlord who hates to replace a leaky gas stove.

Anonymous said...

Not only is that a pain in the buttocks from a cooking/baking perspective, but doesn't a leaky stove lead to unwanted health outcomes, such as, you know, death?

Unknown said...

Oh yes! Irritibility, headaches, and more. I was not a pleasant person to be around. That's why I called in the professionals to document it with the city, and got the new stove from the landlord.