I wish I could sound more upbeat, but I doubt I will.

Today was my mother's birthday...she would have been 83 today. I brought some flowers to her grave and afterwards took a brief, 30-minute walk in the frigid air.

I finished my current writing assignment this morning. My goal was to try to finish these things up faster becus she often lets 2 or 3 days go by before giving me another assignment, and I want/NEED to make more money.

However, my effort this time won't make a difference since she is off today...sigh.

I quit the 2nd writing gig after doing just the 2 stories for them. There were too many issues, including very poor communication generally, poor instructions so I had to keep asking for basic details, and having to wait 45 days to get paid for a freelancer is ridiculous. (My main client direct deposits to my checking account within a week.) Plus I didn't feel the pay was worth it.

Ironically, when I brought this up, they managed to pay me for both stories that day; the CFO who paid me via Paypal sympathized with me, saying that the behavior I described in an email to them was "unacceptable." They were super disorganized. I hope I didn't make a mistake doing that, but so be it. I'm not destitute.

Got a phone call for another gig writing a couple of blogs weekly for doctor/dentist blogs. It all sounded great until she told me the pay: $15 per 400-word blog. Not worth my time.

I backed out of what I'd discussed with my neighbor about letting him graze his sheep on my land. I hadn't realized he intended to cut down trees and plant vegetation on what I consider a too-steep slope. I don't want erosion issues. And I wondered if sheep bleating would start to bother me when they were in my own backyard. If it did, it would be hard to undo my neighbor's efforts and could cause hard feelings if I asked him to undo the fence.

He was okay with it. He called me becus the document I wrote describing his nonprofit farm foundation got about 20 responses from various groups and now he needs help, I guess, responding. But I declined there too. He can't afford to pay me anything as they're just getting by. And I can't afford to keep spending my time on projects that don't pay.

The local perm writing job for which I had a pre-screening interview for and for which i was led to believe would lead to a real interview, hasn't come about. I checked with recruiter twice. I feel glum.

So I guess it feels like a lot of things unraveling, or just not getting off the ground the way I'd like.

I went to an interesting (free) program at the library about what childhood was like in Colonial America. Suffice it to say, it was not fun, especially if you were a slave child. The cure for hiccups was to have the kid urinate on a gravestone of an ancestor. A pregnant slave got no time off and worked right up til the time she gave birth.

I bought some more tapioca so I can make more of my tapioca/chia seed fruit puddings. There's tomatoes thawing so I can make a chili tonight.