This is real change

In my former life I was very naive. I was also very good hearted. One day, I was walking by, minding my own business when out of the corner of my left eye I saw a car dripping water. This guys car has a fault. It’s licking. I stepped back and took a second look, no kidding it’s licking water and there’s a guy inside. He doesn’t even know. I walked to him like the good Nigerian that I am and informed him he has to visit the mechanic as his car is dropping water. He didn’t have to come down or inspect what I just reported. He wasn’t alarmed. He smiled and told me it’s the AC water. All is good.

That was how I embarrassed myself that day.

I now have a family. Last week, my wife’s younger sister came to spend holiday with us. This week, my younger sister joined us. That’s a lot of mouths to feed.

My business is now registered. I have raised money from investors and through crowdfunding.

I am very accountable to a lot of people.

This is no longer a joke.

I no longer tell people their cars are licking; I now know it’s the AC water.

I am listening to my wife more now on a particular matter that has raised tensions. The other day, against my will but for my good, I now am turning it into a habit to request for payment ahead of starting any job.

Freelancing isn’t easy. People price low. People don’t pay. People make 5 thousand revisions. You stay up late. You do a bunch of things. It’s a lot of fun also and free time but it’s also payments that never come through after hours or days of work.

There has been too many disappointments. I complete jobs and people don’t pay. They abandon the job or beg their way out of payment. Most just ignore you. Some are so skillful in generating excuses. A majority of them are so good they’ll make you feel you did a bad job and it would be evil of you to request payment. Some downright reject the job after its complete. The worst set of non payers are those who consistently shift the date of payment in daily or weekly doses of increment. Weekends never come as they’ll request for next weekend again.

I have been tired of this since 2012. My wife has been tired of it since the last six months. And now she is making me actually do something about it.

So I have been practicing it of recent. I request for payment before I write a line of code. Most people don’t go through with the job anymore once I request for payment ahead. But that’s fine, it frees up my time to do the important task and it tells me they didn’t have money in the first place so it was going to be another case of no payment.

On the brighter side of things, some people actually pay. That’s exciting.

This has come to stay. This guarantees I’ll only spend my time working on projects that are important to the clients.

This is real change. I’m feeling like Harvey Spector.