About a year ago, my second-biggest client decided to take their work "in-house," that is, have one of the employees do the work rather than contract with me to do it. This contract was the easiest, most lucrative work I had. They paid me for my time every day, whether or not they sent me any work. I had automated nearly the entire process, so it took me about 10 minutes to complete. That job accounted for about 25% of my income.
Despite months of slogging through job boards, nothing has turned up. Nearly every job is full time, in an office park somewhere. It's not that I don't want that kind of job, it's that I can't do it. Health issues prevent me from working that way. I need to be able to take breaks, take a nap, take a walk, and work max 30 hours a week. Even then, I am utterly exhausted by Friday and spend the weekend trying to recharge.
At first, the loss of this income didn't impact us much. But as the months went by, money got tighter and tighter. We started to fall behind a month here and a month there, always catching up when I picked up some editing work from two places in Maine I still work for occasionally.
Then I got a gig proofreading educational materials for the state of Washington. It promised to be steady work. Things were looking up. I was a subcontractor through a company based north of Seattle. Three of us were to work on this project.
But all of a sudden the state pulled the plug on the project.
For the first time we fell behind two months. We asked our mortgage holders to make a "loan modification"--that's what they call it. Not renegotiate, modify.
And then the fun really began.
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