No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

When I bought my house and told my friends and family that I was going to be renting out the basement, they all immediately starting making remarks about how good I was going to have it, having someone else pay my mortgage. Yeah, right. As anyone who has ever been a landlord knows, there is a lot more to it than just sitting back and collecting the cheques. (In fact, sometimes you don't even get to collect the cheques.) You may make some money, it's true, but you will work and suffer for it.

Today was a reminder for me of how jobs work the same way. Although I would say that I have been busy and stressed more often than not for the past couple of years, there are always some days that reach new heights (or depths). There was nothing special about today other than it seemed like everything was blowing up and I was unable to fix any of it quickly and everyone needed it IMMEDIATELY. Ack! Where's the exit?!

Anyway, without belabouring the scenario (which isn't fully resolved yet anyway), let's just say that on days like this I feel that I earn every penny of my hourly rate for the entire project. And ironically, the biggest part of that is sticking up my hand and taking the blame for whatever went wrong. So the no free lunch rule strikes again. You can make money, sometimes very good money - but you will work for it, and sometimes very painfully hard indeed.

Today's billable hours (so far): 10.75
Today's contracted hours: 1.0