Vacay, Email and Layoffs

We recently got back from a week of vacation, something that I wasn't sure I wanted to do, and indeed wasn't sure we could do since the L word was first spoken in our house. No, not that word. This one. We actually get an extremely good accommodation deal, sometimes completely free, through having connections. That sounds really Mafia, not that there is one, but it's just dumb luck on my part. Anyway, I discovered several things during my foray into Florida:

Being able to do actual freelancing work is a tenuous thing when you're out of town. Away from home, everything becomes infinitely more complicated all of a sudden. One of the offspring was injured during the trip and it took forever to find out what to do about it, What doctor to see, where to even find one, etc.

The main thing that you can generally count on being able to do is managing email. Even when I didn't have much time at the hotel to actually try to work, there is always time to read and respond to emails, which doesn't take that long even if you have a lot of them. Even just a few minutes in the morning and again at night is enough to manage email, stay in communication with ongoing clients and answer questions sent to you. In the end, that's most of what I could do while away this time.

A number of people really are clinging to the mid-80s idea that the tanner you are, the more attractive you are. This isn't the case.

Every part of the offline economy seems to be having problems. Even the place that I went, generally a hugely profitable place, is in the middle of layoffs. The shops, usually bustling, were empty. Virtually all of them were having sales, something I've never seen in all the trips I've made there over the past mhhmmmm years. There were items available as much as 75 percent off, and people weren't buying.

Upon returning, I was super glad that I work almost exclusively online, which numerous reports have shown to be a growing sector of the economy. And then I read this. So, the apocalypse is pretty much around the corner. This sucks on many levels, one of which being that I recently applied to be a Google Quality Rater, and now I won't be able to afford any of the pre-apocalypse sales.