![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
We've been really lucky with Covid. Scotland is, frankly, not being good about observing lockdown procedures. But it's out of the way without a huge amount of travel back and forth. So it's gotten off pretty lightly, especially up here in the Highlands. And with winter setting in, I doubt we'll get a very brisk tourist trade, which is the obvious source of imported infection.
We've been pretty much locked down here at home, though oldest kid is now going to secondary school (high school, effectively.) She wants to, and we don't feel it's reasonable to demand she stay locked up with her parents in a country where she knows almost nobody :-/ Middle kid and the (she says she's not a) baby (any more) are still observing lockdown with their parents.
After most of a year of trying to make my side business pay my rent, I have a stronger idea of how much money it can make, and how much money we need. So I've been adding in consulting work, and I plan to do a lot more of that in the new year. There are ways to work for myself successfully, but "I'll sell infoproducts" is clearly not one of them for more than a handful of people. I'm not one of that handful. The Ruby community is also not the easiest place to do it - I might have a better time in Javascript-land, but I'm not (yet?) ready to make that transition. I'll get the freelancing paying for itself and then look at my further product-selling options afterward.
On the plus side, it looks like the transition to freelancing won't be bad and I can basically keep it part-time. I'll know more by mid-January-ish, but early signs are really good. We still have reasonable savings, so there's no huge rush.
We're still enjoying Inverness a great deal. It's a shame we can't do more exploring right now.
Christmas baking has been going well. I should get started on the next round - probably with a cranberry curd tart. I hadn't heard of them until recently. But we absolutely love lemon curd, it sounds good, and eldest kid has made a bunch of frozen pie crust that I should get started on using.
It's kinda weird raising a kid who, at 12, is already a genuinely good cook. She's definitely better than I was when I got to university. She shows every sign that by the time *she's* university age, she'll be as good as I was after years of adulthood.
We've been pretty much locked down here at home, though oldest kid is now going to secondary school (high school, effectively.) She wants to, and we don't feel it's reasonable to demand she stay locked up with her parents in a country where she knows almost nobody :-/ Middle kid and the (she says she's not a) baby (any more) are still observing lockdown with their parents.
After most of a year of trying to make my side business pay my rent, I have a stronger idea of how much money it can make, and how much money we need. So I've been adding in consulting work, and I plan to do a lot more of that in the new year. There are ways to work for myself successfully, but "I'll sell infoproducts" is clearly not one of them for more than a handful of people. I'm not one of that handful. The Ruby community is also not the easiest place to do it - I might have a better time in Javascript-land, but I'm not (yet?) ready to make that transition. I'll get the freelancing paying for itself and then look at my further product-selling options afterward.
On the plus side, it looks like the transition to freelancing won't be bad and I can basically keep it part-time. I'll know more by mid-January-ish, but early signs are really good. We still have reasonable savings, so there's no huge rush.
We're still enjoying Inverness a great deal. It's a shame we can't do more exploring right now.
Christmas baking has been going well. I should get started on the next round - probably with a cranberry curd tart. I hadn't heard of them until recently. But we absolutely love lemon curd, it sounds good, and eldest kid has made a bunch of frozen pie crust that I should get started on using.
It's kinda weird raising a kid who, at 12, is already a genuinely good cook. She's definitely better than I was when I got to university. She shows every sign that by the time *she's* university age, she'll be as good as I was after years of adulthood.
