7 months..

I forgot to post at the 1/2 year mark of my non-employed life. But time flies as usual, and now it's already SEVEN MONTHS since I've left my job in the newspaper!

Well, can't really complain about my life as a freelance writer - with all the flexibility and the time I have to myself. But as I began to settled in back to work (ie. contributing to a number of publications) since after CNY, I also began to feel one major woe of the life as a freelance writer - the INCOME.

Yes, it's not easy to make money at all as a freelance writer - for the payment is really quite low. Even if I work my butts off and produce say 4-5 articles a week (like what I did in MM before), I will only be getting a fraction of what I used to earn..

Sad.. but in life everything has its pros and cons. And that's the down side of a `good life' I guess..

I know this may sound sickening to some of you - I can get up at noon, go to gym or do things I like such as watch movie in the afternoon, and am free to accompany parents or run errands during the day etc... I can do my work anytime and anywhere. Nowadays, I work on my laptop quite often at Starbucks, or else, I can concentrate better late at night (also the normal time I blog!)

But about a month or so back, I started to feel I was under-working. Besides not getting enough money I actually wanted to write more to keep myself busy. So in the last month or so I have put in more initiative to look for more jobs, thus the last two weeks had been quite busy which was good actually. But now again things seem to slow down.. and that's the nature of my job I guess.. the volume of work is just unpredictable.

Anyway, it has been a good 7 months - like a long nice holiday prolonged. :) And I think in my working life, I've never been so stress-free. People have commented I look fresher and better ;)

When I decided to be a freelance writer in February, one of the reasons for me doing so was so that I have more time to write my book - yes, a book I started so many years ago and only recently continued. But ashamed and sad to say, I have not really been doing that. In fact, I have stopped for almost 2 months now and just wrote a little bit more the other day. I know that I have to be more disciplined.. in fact, it is no excuse besides sheer laziness and just lack of motivation/inspiration.. But I know once I work on it, the momentum should resume.

So yes, this is going to be a resolution for the next seven months of the year.. can you believe it, we are entering June already?

To end, just want to rant a little on what happened just now.

Had a most frustrated and helpless hour at Mid Valley's carpark. After watching movie and waiting to exit the carpark, I found out I have lost my parking ticket! I always put it at a compartment in my car but it wasn't there. So I had to drive my car to the side (in the process inconvenient other drivers) and I searched for it everywhere in the car, and even in my bag and other unlikely places.. and even walked all the way to the two parking spaces I parked at earlier - from one end of the building to the other!

The fine for lost ticket was RM50 and I told myself I was not going to pay that!! Finally I had to tell the parking attendant that my ticket could not be found. He asked me whether I wanted to pay the RM50 fine and I said `no!' And as if by miracle, he said I would need to fill up a form and write a `report' on how I lost my ticket and then I would only need to pay RM7 - which is the maximum daily rate of the carpark.

Phew! At least they are not so strict. I remember paying RM30 for lost ticket at 1 Utama a year or two ago. So this time I paid like RM3 extra (since I did stay in the carpark quite long) and wasted an hour of my time. Not mentioning the hastle and anxiousness..

Hmm.. I really wonder where the parking ticket has gone.. seems like it has vanished into thin air!?