memoriam wrote:@jacob: Did you get some written summaries of the "very important although in fact quite useless" video calls? If not, maybe you could ask them to make such after every video call, just to not miss anything. If he doesn't care about being charged extra then I'm not sure anything would help. Sounds like a hopeless cause
Did I understand well that there is some mixup with your rates? I thought you mentioned that earlier but maybe I misunderstood something.

I have to sit there and basically make constant notes while he's talking I filled up two whole pages this time and honestly most of it could have been explained a lot easier in text. Like he gave me this whole rambling 5-minute talk (honestly, he talks a lot without even giving pauses for me to reply) about his prologue and how, because I'd read it, I would remember that there is this bit and that bit and.......... only for me to get to the end and finally get a word in edgeways to say that he hasn't sent me the prologue to read yet -___- Also, his whole point was "I don't know whether the perspective should be fixed or fluid". He just had to describe 5000000 very specific points about the perspective in order to say this, and none of them made any sense to me because I haven't read the damn thing. It was 40 mins of that over and over and over.

Also yes, so basically I got paid only half my rate for this call because I have to bill it by time, and I can't pretend the call went on longer when he literally has the call log and was there. AND. He made me appear on video while he was only audio. Which means I couldn't take advantage of those long and rambling parts to do something like design some graphics I needed to make, which I could easily have done if he wasn't watching me. I like to double up work if I can especially so I can double-bill for times like this when I'm getting less money than I should.


UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH anyway. I guess I am just complaining for nothing because he's paying quite well so long as I keep getting away with this scheme of charging him for two hours of work when I've only done one hour. If it reaches a point where he's calling so often I can't recoup the time at all, I will then think about resigning the project.

@Moi: I think you're just Highly Sensitive and people often call such people oversensitive. Also you most probably need some kind of therapy (who doesn't?) and maybe through that you would learn about stabilizing your emotions. I know I can get real extreme with emotions and therapy is definitely helping me, as well as Youtube, lol XD Psych2Go has great short psychological content, for example. Understanding your mechanisms leads to accepting yourself as you are without seeking external (in)validation, and also leads to controlling yourself better. Surprisingly there're many thinking patterns and codepencences that we as humans hold on to like it's the last thing we have and they are actually harmful or at the very least not helpful. Letting go is more often than not the right answer. Although it's not easy.
Sometimes I feel I'm going unintentionally preachy, and I think that's now

@jacob: Maybe after thhis project you'll need to rethink your rates then, so nobody will be killing you like that
You could also say "hey, dumbass, if you keep taking my time with video calls then I'll have to reconsider the rate we agreed on, because that's more demanding than my usual projects". Couldn't you? I mean, it's tough love but if you've told him already how you feel about video calls, then if he's making your work extra hard you should raise the rate for him. It makes sense to me although I don't know how to make business in the UK, perhaps I'm wrong

memoriam wrote: @jacob: Maybe after thhis project you'll need to rethink your rates then, so nobody will be killing you like that
You could also say "hey, dumbass, if you keep taking my time with video calls then I'll have to reconsider the rate we agreed on, because that's more demanding than my usual projects". Couldn't you? I mean, it's tough love but if you've told him already how you feel about video calls, then if he's making your work extra hard you should raise the rate for him. It makes sense to me although I don't know how to make business in the UK, perhaps I'm wrong

I already doubled my rates before this project The problem was that I gave him a quote for the *full project* at my new rate. I didn't realise he was going to use the site's in-built system for hourly billing (because I've literally never had a client do that before), and so I hadn't remembered to update the hourly billing rate on there. I have updated it now, but because of the contract already existing previously, it stays at the old rate. And I accepted the contract as it was because I've always just worked with project milestones before, so I wasn't even paying attention to the hourly rate. That's why I'm charging him double hours on everything else.
His thing is that he's basically willing to keep paying me until we finish the project, even if it goes over the original quoted price. So, if I say "this is taking more time so I need to raise the rate", well, it doesn't make sense. He's paying for the hours of work directly, not the work as a whole

@Moi: I didn't mean concealing as much as just accepting them and learning to allow yourself to feel and express them but not staying in them for too long. Or learning how to get rid of negative emotions in a healthy way. Punching bag would definitely help. Sometimes I get "so angry I could do a cardio session" then I do and I'm suddenly tired but happy XD

@jacob: Yeah, I now see how it's a hopeless situation. Then you'll probably start asking your clients about every tiny detail of how they will want to work with you because you don't want surprises like that in the future I'd get paranoid with coming clients if I were you


Guys, I'm so tired I don't even... I could fall asleep anytime, anywhere. Except not, because at night when normal people go to sleep I suddenly can't stop my brain from spewing random thoughts into my mind and I jump from thinking about unicorns to WWII to past lives to dreams I last had to blaming myself for not meditating more and so on... During the day I can fall asleep like a baby. But nights, lol nope. I need medication. WTF?

So... 1 of my cousin's just had a baby. Another cousin is gonna have a baby boy in April. One girl from Ash's friends circle is pregnant, also expected to have a boy in April. Then a girl at work just went on maternity leave, so apparently she's preggers as well. everybody's pregnant. Even my sister who's not really sure she wants kids. So I'm gonna be an aunt, but not a mom... eyyy, confetti-motherfreakinvbzasretseyuiyoujlkdgcxhgsjhvkjcvzsurahishylteIgkau.

And then that Spanish guy eats my soul at a call, where I'm left almost completely alone because my team won't even peep a word and my supervisor doesn't know our process and kliyqtdchgfkcpgn;guoyzswlsmfdn,vcfyuIGOhalsKN.

Thank you for listening to my TEDx talk