I spent the past few days tying up loose ends, including a few insurance matters. Dull, dull, but necessary. As long as my head is clear and my body can drag itself to my office upstairs, I can work. But if even that fails, my landlord will still want his rent and my cat his food. No kind employer or state to help me out; independence has its price. Saving up would take too long: life is fragile, I could fall down the stairs (my house has five steep staircases) tomorrow. For my cat’s and my own sake I need insurance, a policy with fair conditions and an affordable premium. That is a needle in a haystack; tracing it requires time and the patience to sift through daunting documents phrased like alchemists’ arcana. Insurese is a language in its own right and quite unrelated to Indo-European. I postponed the chore endlessly but finally made the time and found the needle. Nonetheless I will still be careful on the stairs. I may have misinterpreted some of the Insurese.
Yet another loose end: my customer database. It’s digital, part home-made and part courtesy of the software company (all legal and above board, no piracy). It contains relevant information on almost 300 people at last count, all business contacts of some sort. Keeping track of mutations and of who has been contacted when and how is essential. Dealing carelessly with esteemed clients is rude, and bad for business. I therefore spent some hours checking, changing and making new entries. Well done.
Tweaking my website and other digital jobs were also on my list. As a one-person business I cannot afford to outsource such things; a self-employed translator must be a Jill-of-all-trades. Some software applications drive me up my four walls and back again (no names). After such epic battles, going back to translation pure and simple is sheer bliss. Give me grammar and idiom any time. That is on my list for tomorrow: relaxation and study. I am halfway MacKenzie’s “Principles & Pitfalls of English Grammar”. It is great fun, believe it or not, at least for the like-minded.
