Website design By BotEap.comWere the old days really that good?

Website design By BotEap.comHe may be older than you, dear reader. And I may have been a freelancer and consultant for longer than you.

Website design By BotEap.comSo let me remember and share my memories of happy days.

Website design By BotEap.comBack when news reports speculated about Bill and Hill’s relationship and whether she should kick him out of the house. (Does the Constitution allow First Ladies to put the President’s clothes in garbage bags on the porch?)

Website design By BotEap.comWhen a boring rich nation was obsessed with Britney Spears shaving her head.

Website design By BotEap.comWhen sharks attacked people off US shores and the media was so desperate for bad news, every attack was on page 1.

Website design By BotEap.comToday, as you read online tips on how to get clients, I guess you’re longing for the good old days. When companies had money to spend and they spent it, with abandon.

Website design By BotEap.comAh, life was good. We wore helmets to protect our skulls from the money that rained down on us.

Website design By BotEap.comWell, listen up, young men.

Website design By BotEap.comThose days were happier in retrospect than they were at the time.

Website design By BotEap.comWe are now in a serious recession: you can say that the country is in a deep crisis because when the unemployment figures go down, the stock market goes up. In the good nineties, when unemployment went down, the market fell because the economy was overheating and the Fed could raise interest rates to slow it down.

Website design By BotEap.comI’m sorry to admit this, but I wasn’t swamped with work like desperate hiring managers as funds spurted out of inflated budgets. In fact, I would call the corporate executives and they would turn me down: they had all the staff and did all their work in-house. Or your new VP ditched my writing in favor of a fancy shmancy agency where the staff sat around a giant conference table and gave a good marketing theory.

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Website design By BotEap.comWhenever you’re looking for freelance or consulting jobs, you get a lot more no’s than yes’s. It is inevitable, regardless of the economy.

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Website design By BotEap.comMarketing is always work. And I think it always pays off if done with skill and persistence.

Website design By BotEap.comExperts date the last recession to the late summer of 2008. But for me, the recession started in 1991. I don’t know what happened in the financial markets at the time, but that’s when lifetime job security unraveled for me.

Website design By BotEap.comI had been working in a corporate job that had become somewhat routine and even boring over the years, but no one was fired and people stayed until they decided to retire. We had regular performance reviews and salary increases unless the reviews were delayed a few months. Then we are outraged!

Website design By BotEap.comIn ’91 I had personal divorce issues that resulted in health issues, which in turn resulted in disability leave. (I’m fine now, thankfully.) My job was taken over by someone else before I could go back to work, and I turned to freelancing for the first time.

Website design By BotEap.comI had believed that if you follow the rules and control your temper, you will have your job as long as you want. And if you get tired of it, find another one and jump (although it was better to time the jumps at two-year intervals for the sake of the sacred resume).

Website design By BotEap.comMy career has had ups and downs ever since. I have been injured with many ups.

Website design By BotEap.comBut since then I have never been certain that God is on the 37th floor and that all is well with the world.

Website design By BotEap.comI never hope to have that certainty again.

Website design By BotEap.comEvery era has its own challenges. Life goes on and new opportunities present themselves. We are all uniquely prepared for the challenges we face.

Website design By BotEap.comAs Dan Rather would say before the rug was pulled out from under him, “Value.”