It’s been a steady week of work. I’m feeling a little lost in the temporal flux here since I’m on my own and don’t have to answer to anyone, so I’m sleeping and eating at odd hours (that Spaniards would consider normal…). The room here is great for sleeping and I’ve been putting in a solid seven to nine hours every night this week, which means I’m really productive. I’m cooking from scratch, working, and enjoying walks around the neighbourhood. The cat and I are getting along great and I feel blessed that she’s a cuddler.

Earlier this week, I replied to an ad for someone to do the “really boring and tedious” job of cleaning up HTML coding. This is something I love doing, so I replied with a rock bottom hourly rate in the hope of getting it despite not having any “professional” coding experience. The client had me do an hour of work as a test and when he went over the test, he asked me to continue with the project… at 1.5 times the rate we’d agreed upon!

He estimated the job would take 8 hours total and I got it done in 3.25, thanks to fast Spanish Internet and my ease at cutting, pasting, going between multiple tabs, using a WYSIWYG editor, and knowing enough HTML to quickly troubleshoot formatting errors. It also helped that this is work I truly enjoy and can get lost in, so I was hyper focused and concentrated.

The client was happy with my work and asked me what else I do! So he might send me more work of this type, data entry, and even proofreading. I would be delighted if this one-off job turned into something more steady to give me some non-transcription income.

Tonight, I decided to go out for a tapa and beer. The food came super fast and I wasn’t ready to go home, so I ordered a second beer. These are “cañas,” very small beers (about 200mL) served in a wine-type glass, so I still had barely more than a bottle of Bud back home and less than a Balkan beer. Two beers, a chorizo sandwich, and a few French fries came to 4.50CAD. I can’t believe there’s a place here I can go to that’s that cheap!

So far, I have no work for the weekend, so I might go to Almería tomorrow. I will have to watch the bus schedule since there aren’t as many, but the archeological museum (which costs all of 1.50 euros for non-residents) is open all day till quite late, so that gives me a lot of flexibility. There is no point going anywhere on Sundays, so I’ll need to find a way to keep myself occupied here if no work comes in. I’m sure a bunch of movies and cat cuddling will be involved. 🙂