James Herriot's All Creatures Great and Small portrays the Yorkshire farmer as virtually immune to bad news. The heartbreak of watching their backbreaking toil go to nothing is shrugged off with an "Ah. Well, t'ese t'ings happen."
I'm not like that. I've said many times that I'd be the one standing in the middle of a hail-flattened crop, shaking my fist and raging at the heavens--and I would, too. Even one or two beehives give me enough fretting over "livestock" to last the entire year, thank you very much. You don't last long in farming like that.
So I surprised myself a little tonight, shrugging off a lost freelancing gig--one big enough that I would have no life outside of it and my full-time job for at least two months. Not to mention that with it, I'm losing one heck of a chance to learn something new and important. Maybe I should start using "WWYFD" as a touchstone for these kinds of disappointments: What would a Yorkshire farmer do?
Fortunately (for my blood pressure, at least), freelancing isn't quite the same as farming. At least in the respect that the unlucky farmer is left solely with cleaning up the mess and biding time until the next season comes around. You, the freelancer, can immediately jump back into the thick of things: Pound the pavement for new business, become just a bit better at what you do, pick up a new angle (because you always learn so much just researching/writing the proposal), whatever. I'm just sorry that I was only an anonymous subcontractor on the afore-mentioned project. Given my 'druthers, I would be sending a polite "Thanks for considering us" note to the customer right now. Because people usually feel a little bad for having to say "no," and it would be nice to be able to let them know that I appreciated the opportunity to learn about them and their industry.
One other difference: You don't always have to cut your losses, either. In farming, dead cattle don't come back to life; neither do destroyed crops. But the competitor that undercut or out-promised you? They can fall flat on their face. I make a good slice of my salary working on second- and even third-hand code. My husband makes most of his from a client who turned down his firm's first proposal as too expensive, then returned after two other firms wasted countless hours and dollars and still couldn't deliver.
And so I'm off to research off-the-shelf software that could be customized for a different gig that could be out for bid shortly. Lots to learn from that project if it comes through, so better to know what I'm up against earlier than later.
