Something important happened a month ago that some of you on Facebook could have possibly deduced from the fact that I was taking a Wednesday afternoon off here, going to town midday on a Thursday, and getting up late — the amazing proofreading contract that I’ve had since last summer came to a very abrupt end.

It wasn’t the end of the world.

I would have loved to have done it for another six months, but I knew that every shift had been a precious gift. So I had a the money to cover a couple of months’ worth of expenses stashed away in my emergency fund (thanks to the low cost of living here in Mexico!). I’d still want to work hard at making up the lost income to touch those saving as little as possible, but the contract ending wasn’t the bottom dropping out event a similar situation had been the fall of 2014 when I first got to Mexico.

Well, to my surprise, in addition to a reference, they gave me a severance payment! What a gift! My being let go was a business decision that I could understand and this generosity made that decision all the more easy to swallow.

So instead of having to work myself to the bone in January to make sure I could cover February expenses and the lack of income from my Mérida holiday without touching my savings, I could take it easy somewhat easy…. but still remembering that I have a trip home and a flight to Europe to pay for in the next few months!

I’d been granted the gift of time I’d been looking for for so long — time to learn new skills (coding apps for iOS and doing WordPress development!) and to find new clients without the nagging voice at the back of my mind counting all the money I wasn’t making.

The very next day, I was taking the first steps to signing on with a new transcription client. And just a few days after that, after beginning a training program that revealed some ugly truths, I told the client that they were paying slave wages and I wasn’t interested in working for them after all!

That was scary… and liberating! The thing is, I haven’t been living paycheque-to-paycheque for the last year or so and I’ve gotten used to having a better than subsistence level of income. Transcription was the wrong field to get into because it tends to pay slave wages, but I’m now in a position to wait for the better clients to come along.

And sure enough, one did. Her rates aren’t amazing, but they’re fair, and it’s the kind of transcription work I want to be doing. If I had clung to the first opportunity that came along, I would never have bothered to keep looking and therefore found this one.

And then, something else came along, another proofreading contract that pays well and for which the client is hoping to build a long-term relationship!

I am absolutely slammed with work right now after several quiet weeks of getting myself sorted and it is fantastic! I have a good mix of tasks, I haven’t had to make any budgetary adjustments (Mexico being so inexpensive helps, of course!), and I’ll be able to enjoy my time off in Mérida. So far it looks like it’ll be ten days off. I had planned to do proofreading there for the old contract, so if I have to do a little proofreading for the new one, it won’t be a problem. 🙂