September-November 2019 Wrap-Up: Wedding, Programming, Reads & Work

Monthly Wrap-Ups, That Luana Me, The Freelance Life · November 30, 2019, Saturday

Welcome to the wrap-up post for the months of September through November 2019.

Only one month to go until the end of this year. I can’t believe we’re already entering the second decade of the 21st Century.

Here’s a sum-up of the news (not a happy one):

My father died on Oct 16, 2019. In the end, while leukemia was about to lose the war, complications from therapies won him over. I know he’s with God now, but I miss him like crazy and knowing that I won’t have my darling father to walk me to the altar the next year… breaks my heart.
I started on a new hemorrhoid therapy and it’s giving results. Because PSAS was caused by internal hemorrhoid compression of a group of sacral nerves… I suffer from fewer PSAS crises now (but they’re still not so easy to cope with; I’m still grateful for the improvement anyway.)
It’s a bad time to be a freelance copywriter, as there seems to be some ongoing market crisis and I have been with little to no work since August. I keep trying, but right now I can’t seem to be able to see the end of the tunnel…
… BUT I may have found a Content Marketing client. We might get started in December and I may stay with them long term.

In spite of the grieving and work-related despair, below I listed the stuff I’ve done September to November this year. Never give up, right?

Monthly Wrap-Up

Projects

We’re actively looking out for houses and churches now. You know, for our wedding. 🙂

Nothing’s easy now that dad is no longer with us and he can’t walk me to the altar the next year, but I want to be happy on my special day even for him, so the sooner we get stuff done, the more relaxed we’ll be on that day.

Secondly, I’m giving learning Go… a go. 🙂

I haven’t programmed in years and my knowledge stops at writing small PHP scripts. I definitely want to go back to study PHP, C and Python, but at the moment Go is a better alternative to get back into the programming vibe because I’m developing a strong interest in container technology and the Docker framework.

Reads

I read only 3 books these three months:

Le tre ghinee by Virginia Woolf (Italian translation of “Three Guineas”)
Évariste Galois: Morte di un matematico by Paolo Pagli and Laura Toti Rigatelli
Transformers: Exiles by Alexander C. Irvine

But there are a few others I’m about to finish in early December:

Independent Study For Gifted Learners by Frances A. Karnes
The Fourth Age: Smart Robots, Conscious Computers, and the Future of Humanity by Byron Reese (Note: I’ll post a review of this book on Luana.me as soon as I’m done reading)
L’uomo che vide l’infinito by Robert Kanigel (Italian translation of “The Man Who Knew Infinity”)

I doubt I’ll reach my 2019 goal of 45 books, but that’s fine. 🙂 Quality matters more than quantity IMHO.

Freelance Work

The market crisis began around July, so I only got 2 articles published since.

I no longer work for Monitor Backlinks and CoSpot (perhaps we’ll collaborate again in the future, but at the moment their blog is on undefined hiatus) and I’m actively looking for new B2B clients to write for.

I might have found a job as a Content Marketer at an SEO agency. I really like the owner: he’s a wonderful person, understanding of disability and definitely open-minded.

More on that in December, though, because I don’t know if it’s going to work at all with the unpredictability of my health condition.

Below are the links to the articles that were published between September and November on Bosmol Social Media (an old client who came to my rescue), in chronological order:

Bosmol Social Media (2)

Conversely, I’ve been doing some huge update work on all my business-related websites and I’m about to publish new posts over the next two weeks.

Conclusion

It’s not a good time in my life and I’m surviving more than living, but things will look up eventually.

2020 is going to be a better year, I’m sure.

Watch over me from Heaven, Dad. I need your love more than ever.

(Email me at lu@luana.me if you want to leave a comment on this post.)

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