... so that's the way you want to play it, eh ? fine, then, no one wants to talk to me, so i'm playing games - and not the online ones, either.
thhhhppptt :-p
so there. and i'm going for prime rib later, too. meet me there, if you dare.
someone may have noticed that i appear to have more time on my hands lately. well, that's true - my latest engagement has come to (yet another) abrupt end, as budget appears to have run out. kind of a head scratcher there - most of us watch our bank balances as they alternately dwindle & grow, and are fairly aware of the current state of things, knowing whether we can afford a picnic or a trip to the carribean or wot...
well, i guess if funds suddenly disappear, that's different. that can happen as needs are juggled, or as expected sources don't materialize. and then there's the modern attitude towards credit, where some people party hard until the collectors are at the door, in blissful ignorance all the way.
and i have trained myself to expect these things. not just in a general sense - i explicitly think every day, and sometimes throughout the day, "if this ended now, what would be an issue?", and then i fill whatever hole appears. this occurs mostly in the professional sense, since in my personal life it's more of an "ok, don't expect that you will still be employed by day's end" sort of thing to prevent myself from having unrealistic expectations. and that was exactly what i thought to myself in the shower that morning i found out. no coincidence, since that's the thought every morning.
are there self-fulfilling prophecy effects from this, maybe ? perhaps, and in the professional sense it's "of course", since the whole point of ethical consulting is to not marry a customer to my services. there will always be periods when that is true as portions of projects play themselves out, but those need to be kept as short as possible.
yet in this case, the money side of the equation caused an interruption at a particularly bad place in their project which could end up costing them far more than they've saved. but cash flow is the reality, especially when foresight & planning is in short supply.
and i'm not entirely naive either. "budget" could just be the nominally acceptable "excuse" covering other real reasons that have the potential to be more confrontational, at least in some minds. bottom line though, is the old "if you don't want me, i don't want you" formulation. we'll see what comes up next over there.
meanwhile... well, that will be another post.