The early bird

I wake up at 6, earlier than I am wont to do. I imagine sitting snugly on the couch, the lamp on, dark outside the windows, reading the paper, drinking my tea and feeling virtuous because I'm up early enough to do so. None of this guilty lazy sleeping as long as I can, afraid to get up and face the day. Except for moments later, Matt comes down, perches on the couch by my feet, turns on his laptop and starts sighing heavily. All my muscles tense. I clearly need to be productive and am doing a miserable job. Then he tells me his cousins are coming on Monday and we have booked him to work. Can't he just come home for lunch? Finally at 7am, 15 minutes late, he leaves for his networking breakfast, which has become more onus than opportunity. Just more time taken up networking with others who also don't have enough work. The blind leading the blind.

It's not exactly that we don't have enough work. We have almost a full load. It's that our business plan lacks one feature--profitability. The amount of work required for each job that the market dictates has a certain cap on price is phenomenal. It puts us in the category of factory workers, toiling away for a low wage. This isn't what we've been taught. As one unemployed worker quoted in the New York Times today, "We grow up with the impression there's a correlation between effort and the fruits of your labor."  Funny thing is, we love our clients. They're smart, motivated, ethical. They want to do the right thing.

While I'm looking for jobs, the likelihood of finding something that will earn what we need is almost nil. Should I go for it anyway? Our business mentor imagines if we readjust our thinking we'll come up with a business model that will work for us. I am filled with dread. Even if we are able to create a more profitable plan, we'll then have to figure out how to market to and obtain more customers. Almost all our recent clients have been referred by somebody who requires the labor-intensive unprofitable audit. That well would dry up.

Last post I insisted that depression was funnier than hope. I apologize if this hasn't been too funny. Then again, this is more of a recession posting. Recession is rarely funny.