The whole self-employed thing is great, I love feeling so liberated, being able to decide what I do and when. However, after decades of employment and salary, however meagre, the lack of regular payment is hard going. Cash flow is an issue. I had hoped to keep credit card use to the absolute minimum, but if I want to put petrol in the car to get to work, for which I haven’t yet been paid, I will need to use it. I’m sure things will settle down, and I’ll feel a little more in control, but for the first time in decades again, I am reliant on the regular income of someone else to ease out the creases.
Today someone said to me “I’ll get the money to you sometime next week”. I felt like screaming at them “I’ll come and get it, I need it now, I have £3.74 in my purse!” But I was polite and professional and said calmly, “yes of course next week will be fine”.
I have enough work booked in over the next couple of months to provide me with an equal income to that I had in school. I am working a lot less hours to earn it too. But I don’t get paid till it’s done. Possibly a month after it’s done. I just have to learn not to panic! All will be well. If I eat less and walk further from the free parking to my studio that will do me good too!
******
Songwriters Circle end of term Showcase tomorrow.
(mac birmingham, in Cannon Hill Park, 7:30 if you’re interested, £2 a ticket!)
I am singing the song I wrote with my friend Nicki, and singing backing vocals on two songs by other people. I started by being so grateful for people helping me, and felt I was taking all the time, but now, a couple of terms in, I feel that I can offer something myself. not much, but something.
I like this song we wrote. It started from a poem I wrote ages ago – March 2011 in fact, which had followed on from some of the “Respectable” work I was doing. The final song is different in tone, and the lyrics are different from the poem… I like the way that the melody and rhythm edit the words, sharpen it up, extraneous words disappear, the scan changes. Sometimes, because of this, the meaning can change too, but I quite like that too really… it’s interesting…
After the show, I may post a recording of the performance.
yep… here it is on Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/elena-thomas/wake-up-live
Here’s the original poem:
Wake up
Talk to me
Look at me
Hold me
Explain yourself
Can’t hear you
Can’t tell by looking
Can’t read you
Don’t understand
Explain yourself
Here’s how the lyrics ended up:
Can’t hear you
Can’t see you
Can’t tell by looking at you
Wake up
Talk to me
Wake up
Look at me
Hold me
If I look at you now
All I see is a man
If the truth can be told
I don’t mind if you go
Every time I see you
See the man that you were
The man I thought that I knew
Wake up
Talk to me
Wake up
Look at me
Hold me
If I look at you now
All I see is a man
If the truth can be told
I don’t mind if you go
Now the truth can be told
I just want you to go
Don’t want to look at you now
Not here
Not now
Not him
Not mine
Not mine
