Naturist Fiction Archive

Diagnosis: Depression

Letters : 2387 Words : 444

By: The Administrator

I went to see my Doctor and it's official, I am in situational depression.

Sure, the failure of the Catherine Reynolds movie(s) is a part of it, but at the same time, I had a few failures in my day job as a computer consultant.

It's not so much that I didn't deliver what I promised, but it's that it took a lot longer than it was supposed to take.

When you sign a contract with a customer saying that you will deliver something for 20,000$, you anticipate that:

1. You will survive long enough to get paid more than the deposit
2. When you actually get this 20,000$, you can repay the debts incurred during the development and cover your expenses between the previous job and the next one

It's part 2 that most consultants struggle with.

Let's say I need 3000$ per month to survive.

If I take a contract in March which pays me 15,000$ and that I have no accumulated debts.

This means that the contract pays for 5 months of development. If I do the project in 3 months and get another contract a month later, I am fine.

If the contract lasts 5 months and I start another one right away, I am usually fine (depending on the deposit on the next contract).

But if I plan the March project to finish on May 1st  and schedule the next project to begin on May 8th, then I have only 1 week of "wiggle room" between them.

If I can't deliver the March project in time for May 8th, the May customer will be hesitant to go forward because the admission that you were late on the March one makes them fear that you will not deliver yours.

Or perhaps they are willing to wait but the next one isn't.

Then, you rush to deliver and make mistakes which slows down your work and causes even more problems.

Eventually, you are completing project #3 of the year when project #5 was supposed to start with no sign of any time available for project #4 in the middle.

Doctors get that everyday, but they reset after each full day of work.

When do I reset? If a single project goes astray, how do I get the time to breathe?

If at the same time, your movie project fails, you feel down. You feel like your are drowning. 

The silver lining is that I lost one of the future projects. It initially was the trigger for my depression episode, but I am beginning to realize that this is exactly what I might need to get all my clients back on track.

We'll see. In all cases, no vacation for me for a long time...

 

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