But if I work all day at the Blue Sky Mine, there'll be food on the table tonight...

It's funny how these things happen. A few weeks ago I blogged about how I felt alone and isolated in my work, like some desert island shipwreck survivor. Well, last week I started week at a very high-profile interior design firm.

What?

That's right. Now I'm basically working full-time to assist one of the principal designers and am learning so much about the industry and client relations it's mind-boggling. I'm okay with performing some administrative tasks I haven't done in nearly 15 years (I've been channeling Ugly Betty) because I'm picking up on things that one can never learn in a classroom: contract negotiations, change orders, construction disputes, and, most importantly, finessing clients. The steady paycheck is kind of nice, too.

Luckily I'm no spring chicken, and have been bringing my experienced and knowledgeable inner Betty Suarez to the workplace (and I mean the pragmatic, organized, and upbeat side of Betty--I don't wear ponchos. And my glasses are D&G, thankyouverymuch.) I also negotiated time to continue working with my own clients, so if you're out there reading this, you have nothing to fear. If anything, this new job will make our projects together even better and more professionally executed.

In fact, I developed a new one-sheet that a contact is handing out to prospective clients. It was nice to have a companion piece to my graphic design/communications one-sheet, summarizing the kind of work I can do as Retrograde. I hope in the future I can recruit some of the good people in the Colleagues sidebar to help with my projects.

To quote from one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, "When the train comes in, everybody rides!"