Sounds lovely, right? I won’t lie to you and tell you it’s as easy as clicking a button or signing up with some worthless content mill because it’s not. But if you’re looking for webmasters willing to pay decent amounts of money for content, you need to find them and then convince them to hire you…subtly.

Sadly, so many writers still haven’t actually figured out how to do this smoothly. So I’ll give you a big hint – it’s not by selling your soul in the Buy/Sell/Trade section of the forum! No free samples required here, people!

Forum Basics

Let’s start at the beginning to be sure we’re not leaving anyone behind here. A forum can be on any topic and can involve any number of professionals. Webmaster forums (and there are many – do a quick search, you’ll find them) are plentiful and a nice place to start honing your skills. But if you know enough in a particular area to be useful in finance, DIY, technology or any other topic – find the forum that is most active in that area. Writer’s forums are a great place to visit with other writers, but find some client-based forums first – while some do, most writers aren’t hiring other writers regularly.

Once you’ve found a forum you like, make a membership account right away. The membership has to age a bit to give you credibility, so go ahead and get a username established before you start reading.

 
And you must read.

The worst thing you can do on a forum is jump in to posting and chatting and offering services without getting a feel for the place. Think of a typical webmaster forum like a bar. You don’t just walk in, hop on a stool and start drinking and selling things to people around you. You need to stand at the entrance awhile. Check things over. Walk around a bit. Take a seat in the back and pick the wrapper off a beer while you observe to see if you like this place or not.

That’s your first step here and it should be a big clue that this is not a “get rich quick” scheme. You actually have to invest some serious time and energy in the forum you’ve chosen to make this pay off.

Become One with the Forum

Forum marketing takes time upfront and requires ongoing maintenance, but has a nice payoff if you invest wisely. To make your time pay, though, you’ll need to become a valuable member of an active forum.

Being a writer offering $5 or $1 articles in the Buy/Sell/Trade section does not make you an exceedingly valuable member of the forum. You’re like the shoeshine boy – the customers come by, pick someone selling cheap stuff and throw a few dollars your way. No respect in the long run. You want to avoid that.

Don’t make a sales page on the forum. Don’t start a thread about your writing.

Instead, start contributing. When someone asks a question about something you know about, give them a real answer. When someone asks for advice on their landing page copy, respond with some thoughtful advice. Your goal here is not to give away your skills, but to instead invest knowledge by sharing it with those who need it.

What site owners want most is someone they can trust with professionalism and knowledge. After your introduction period ends on the forum, make a simple signature with your name (real names and bylines count for a lot in the writing industry – it gives you real credibility), your title and a link to your professional website. Leave some space in the sig to offer some specials later.

Now just keep posting. You don’t need a thread in the forum. Making one makes it look like you’re competing with the shoeshine boys down there in BST. You have a web presence to do your selling for you. When someone looking for advice on press releases or how to install a new program reads your killer advice, he’ll naturally look to see who you are. Then, he might click on your site link to see what you do.

And suddenly he remembers that he has that project he’s been putting off – and wouldn’t you be perfect since you already know so much about writing press releases! He saw that in your carefully crafted posts that were so helpful! Finally, someone “real” online who he can trust! So the potential client sends you a private message or contacts you through your site and you’re off and running!

How long does it take? It can take days or it can take months. But the longer you invest in a community, the greater the results tend to be. Don’t just tell potential clients they need you in a sales page so much like other threads or pleas for work – show them with your well-written comments, posts and responses.

Include prominent, classy contact information and the serious clients will ultimately come to you. In a tight-knit community, as many of the inner webmaster forums are, recommendations start to fly between other members and soon you’re doing very little but posting about things you know to help others and answering private messages about paid work.

It’s a nice gig if you’re willing to invest in it.

Here’s the toy: http://iwl.me/

“I Write Like” is a website where you essentially paste a chunk of your writing, click the button and see what famous writer you’re most like according to text patterns. So far, after a few test runs, I apparently write like some sort of hybrid between Stephen King and Cory Doctorow. I’m rather bummed – I was hoping for Janet Evanovich. She’s clever and makes me giggle from time to time. Bronte wouldn’t be bad either, but I’m realistic.

But I’ll settle for Stephen King if I really have to.

It should be noted that I don’t own or work with or support the site in anyway. Nor does it support me. But it entertains me and has made me think about voice in writing.

As a writer, your voice is one of your most distinguished features. Of course, a talented writer can tweak that voice to reflect different tones in certain styles. There are also certain times that you don’t want to have much voice at all in your writing.

Playing golf and networking is a soft skill in the traditional workplace. It’s a writing “soft skill” to know how to determine when to use a bit of authentic voice, when to write with neutral tones and when you can pour it on without reservation. For example:

This post is written with an authentic voice. You could argue that I’m writing with no holds barred since I’ve used some slang, some natural phrasing and more than a few punctuation tricks to influence the “sound” of sentences. (Those quotes would be a trick – so would that dash that just made you pause and emphasize this phrase.)

The blog post I wrote for a client had plenty of voice. The celebrity news piece had some voice as well since it was written with an opinion and intentional bias. The scathing email I wrote last week was dripping with voice. (It wasn’t pretty, but it was effective.)

Blogs and features aren’t as interesting if they are written like pure journalism with a “just-the-facts-ma’am” sort of style. Most of the time, readers like personality, so as a writer it is our job to give it to them.

But then there are the times when things need less voice. Press releases, for example, are supposed to be rather dry and constrained. So are white papers and other more sensible business documents. Nobody wants a memo covered with quotation marks and exclamation marks, after all.

Hey peons! I just wanted to let you know that our “consultants” have found some serious problems with productivity this month! It’s going to be a good month for lay-offs around here, so consider putting in some serious “face time” if you’re hoping to make it to July. Have a great one!!

Right. We see the problem there.

Many new writers start out in one of two ways: they write English papers or they write musing online journals. The voice is dry or it’s over the top. Practice finding the gray areas of your voice and learn to use it in a powerful way when you need to and restrain yourself when you should. Believe it or not, it’s often a learned skill.

Well, apparently I’m back to Cory Doctorow again with this piece. (I just tested it.) Who do you write like?

I’m a Mystery to Advertisers Everywhere

I don’t know why, but it cracks me up when I realize that once again I’ve fooled Google. I use Gmail to consolidate some email accounts so that I can check everything no matter where I am or what computer I’m using. That means I’m getting writing emails, mom emails, teacher emails and extended family emails in the same place. Quite a hodgepodge, in fact.

The funny thing is that Google can’t figure out how to target me with the ads I’m not ever going to click on. In a given day I’ve been encouraged to lose weight, buy better lesson plans, vote for various presidential candidates, hire a new SEO write and purchase new faucets and toilets.

And that’s before I start opening specific client emails, which opens me up to any number of additional advertisements including pet shelters, games for children, baby items and plastic surgery. It’s a good thing I know myself well or I might be having an identity crisis (and a damaged ego – really? I need a boob job? You don’t even know me!)

I Can Write Nothing and Make It Sound Good

Have you ever been typing most intensely and then realized that you aren’t even thinking anymore? My fingers and brain are so well trained that I can type without looking at the screen, the keyboard or the computer in any way. I can type reasonably well with my eyes closed for long stretches, but that’s a party trick for another time.

This write-nothing-but-sound-great phenomenon is akin to reading a book quite diligently and having no idea what you just read a few pages later. I’ll be thinking about oil and gas production and writing all about fracking, for example, and then realize that I’ve written something that seems to make sense, and sounds really nice…but actually means nothing at all.

I tuned out what I was typing, but the pattern was there to just keep on typing important sounding words without my brain being engaged at all. Normally, when I catch something like that (in my defense it doesn’t happen very often) I just have to laugh. I sound like an pompous idiot usually, and fortunately I’m able to delete my important sounding gibberish, go to bed for the night and start again the next day with a clear mind.

A small confession: I do use my write-well-say-nothing-real skill in my other career. We have so many teacher forms that have to sound important and use the right words just so they can be filed away by administration. I’ll readily admit I’ve enjoyed my wordsmith skills there for pure amusement. In fact, I just remembered I have another form due tomorrow where I can use them again! What fun that will be!

What strikes you as amusing in this crazy career we all enjoy?

The day continued in the usual way – six hours of teaching teenagers, stop by the gas station, a full round of grocery shopping and then back to pick up the kids. Put groceries away, make dinner, type in codes for Moshi Monsters and get kids fed. Apparently I ate at some point before bathing kids, reading books and celebrating when a tooth came out five minutes after the oldest was supposed to be asleep. (That delayed the schedule a bit, but it’s fun to watch your kids get older.)

Now it’s 9:32 in the evening, I’m rather sluggish, and I’m going to do what I do best – motivate myself to get back in gear. I’ve discussed a few favorite methods for waking up in another post, but there are only so many things you can do when the rest of the world is sleeping a room away – there’s no jamming out to music and power walking with mosquitoes and possums in the dark isn’t especially appealing. Yet despite this deadlines loom, so here’s my plan to kick my sluggish butt back in gear right now:

Do the Easy Stuff First

Long ago, I realized that stacking the deck in my favor makes Monday nights far more tolerable and productive. So I do the fun stuff on Monday. I have some blogs to write for a site catering to ‘tween girls and a couple of regular, small projects. None of it involves serious research, and I actually enjoy the topics on Monday. It’s like a (profitable) warm-up for the rest of the week.

It helps that I’m in my sixth or seventh year of working with these particular clients as well, so there isn’t much stress here – this is the easy night, and that’s highly motivating. (For the record, the hard stuff waits until Tuesday night when I’m most motivated and must be done by Thursday night when I start to drop off again.)

Stare at My Calendar and Move Stuff Around

I live by my calendar, and I play a game with myself almost every week. I put some projects on the calendar in a moment of highly productive drives. At some point last week I was convinced I was going to write some guest posts tonight.

As I spent five minutes staring at my calendar a bit ago, I realized that those posts aren’t likely to happen after all – plus they aren’t the easy, routine client work I count on for my Monday. So I drag those guest posts down a few days to an empty slot on Thursday. Presto! I have a lighter workload today, which feels good.

Be careful with this trick or you’ll get addicted to moving things around and fail to actually get them done. Since I know I’m playing mind games with myself and that the posts will get done by the end of the week (even if I move them to Friday when I actually need to finish them), playing around with the schedule doesn’t hurt anyone and makes me feel better about my workload.

Force Myself into the Zone

I only have a couple hours to work before I crash, rinse and repeat tomorrow. So I can’t afford to waste time or I’ll lose any edge I had. So I turn on music (softly) to keep me motivated, I minimize email and social media and I put my cell phone far away on the charger. I grab a drink, sit down and put myself in the zone.

There comes a point when you just have to force yourself to get started. Pull up the easy stuff, put some words on the page and focus exclusively on what you’re doing. The more intense the focus, the easier it gets to zone out into work. Short of a crying or vomiting child, nothing is going to knock me out of this zone for at least another hour or so. And that will be a productive hour at least.

Never in my lifetime prior to becoming a parent did I realize just how exhausted I could become. Sure, I stayed up all night in high school and maybe a few times in college. I worked hard for a few days, but then there came that day when I got to crash and just sleep and relax and rest for hours and hours and hours.

Now, when I get tired, I don’t get to have fifteen hour sleep marathons. I get to have deadlines instead. Like all of us slogging through lives with responsibilities and adorable little alarm clocks that demand to be fed and cared for every morning at 6 am, it hurts sometimes.

So what do you do when you’re facing a brick wall of writer’s block armed with nothing but another Diet Dr. Pepper and some stale almonds? (Hey – we’re down the pantry basics over here – don’t judge.) Why, you take a big slug of caffeine, shake off the doldrums and you take care of your business.

Get moving.

If you’re looking at the clock and realizing that all of the sane people are sleeping or preparing to sleep right now, you’ve got to get over that mindset if you’re hoping to be even a tiny bit productive. Try some yoga. Run in place. Do some jumping jacks. Try a few push-ups. You can’t sleep and feel lazy if the blood is moving. (It helps burn off those almonds, too.)

Use a list.

Staring at a blank document is disheartening. Instead, pull up your calendar or organizer that lists all of the things you’re going to do today. Get started with the easiest one on the list so you can feel you’re making progress. This is a psychological game, after all.

Jam out.

Remember how you used to rock out while you worked on those high school or college essays? And that was before anyone was paying for your brilliance. Put on the channel where you know the most words (Try Love Stinks or Glee on Pandora – I’m a sucker for both) and start singing. Turn it up, jam out, get motivated – just don’t wake up the kids.

Organize for tomorrow.

If you just can’t do it – you’ve tried, but you’re drooling caffeine and almond juice on the keyboard – don’t create something that will be junk. Instead, update your list of things to do tomorrow (that’s code for make it longer), but ease your burden by organizing a bit before you crash.

You can save the documents to the right folders, pull up your notes or find quick resources you can use. Even if it only saves you fifteen minutes, it’s a start. Besides, after you get more sleep tonight, you’ll be better rested and ready to produce tomorrow.

Declaring Arrogance

I’ve known it for years, but I’m going to just get it out there in the open. You might consider me stuck up. I’m not conceited about my great beauty. Two kids, thirty-two years and that’s pretty much a write-off. I’m not arrogant about my superior writing ability. I think we can all agree that there are fabulous writers out there who far surpass just about all of us in ability. But I am cocky about my ability to make my career work out the way I want it to, and I think we can all celebrate some variation of that same theme.

Does that make me annoying to others? You might be annoyed reading this, but we’ll get through it together. To the person on the street, I’m just another schlumpy mom with two kids and too little sleep. To the clients online, however, I’ve been around long enough to be a true asset. I can sell myself and I don’t have to lie to do it.

It’s heady stuff demanding hundreds of dollars for my time. The fact that they come back means I’m not the only one who thinks my time is worth that much. As well all know, I’m not the only one able to claim these bragging rights – you are, too. And so is that guy and the one working from home a few houses down the road. It’s a right of well-paid freelancers and small business owners to be just a wee bit arrogant, and surprisingly that bit of cockiness is respected by clients.

Being Loud and Being Proud

There are a few things working against us in the arrogance department, however.

• The word arrogance has a negative connotation. Haughty, conceited, stuck-up, cocky, etc. All of those are insults.

• Don’t shoot the messenger, but there have been more than a few studies that claim women aren’t proud enough of their achievements. If they were, they’d be more competitive in various careers and there wouldn’t be a significant pay gap for the same job between women and men.

• Humility is a virtue. Okay. It’s hard to get around that one. The exact opposite of arrogance is a good thing, meaning excessive pride is obviously bad. Hm. But without pride how can you utilize your talents? An argument for another day perhaps.

So what do we do? If you’re uncomfortable being arrogant in your successes, why not use a word with a positive connotation? You can be proud. You can be confident. I dare you to find a distinction between being confident and being arrogant when it comes to self-made success. It’s just splitting hairs.

Demonstrate Confidence

Hairs, definitions and denotations aside, the take away here is simple. Often it’s not your abilities selling your writing services. It’s your confidence. It’s not your amazing grasp of the subjunctive that is going to make clients pay you lots of money to write a blog post. It’s the seemingly arrogant way you carry on discussions of your abilities. You know what to do, and you can explain it to others.

You understand how to be successful. And believe it or not, many client’s greatest desire is a professional who is exactly that – confident, assertive (there’s another good pride word) and independent. A lot of my clients are relieved they don’t have to virtually hold my hand – it’s actually a huge selling point.

Maybe you’re not there yet. Maybe you never have any desire to be so sure of yourself you’re able to argue a rate with a client or let him know when he’s looking at a business idea that needs serious rethought.

You may be disgusted with me for saying arrogance in business is a positive attribute, and I truly think it is so long as you’re not blinded by confidence to your own shortcomings. But I have to wonder if every successful freelancer isn’t proud and confident to the point of arrogance – even if he or she isn’t actually comfortable with it yet.

Fortunately I found a bit more patience in the back of the pantry next to the Claritin for my seasonal allergies and the family survived. (The cinnamon rolls did not.)

Patience is critical, but it’s not the only ingredient necessary for a healthy working parent. Here are some others to keep stocked at all times:

Humility – While a bit of swagger is necessary in our profession to sell our expertise, anyone who sells thousands of dollars worth of services before lunch needs to be able to switch gears a few hours later when they wake covered in their child’s vomit. (True story)

Humor – While there are days when I’m more ready to pull my hair out than laugh at the absurdity of it all, so long as there are more times that I laugh than those when I want to throw in the towel, I figure we’re doing all right.

Cleverness – I was going to put intelligence on my list, but then I realized being book smart isn’t always the most important thing when it comes to this particular job. Often it’s simply being clever enough to figure out how to balance a tremendous workload on a day to day basis. No doctorate degree can prepare you for two careers, two children and ten loads of laundry.

Dashing Good Looks – Finally, it’s important to look great doing this job. Not all of us can pull off wearing the same sweats for three days in a row and still look good sitting with a laptop next to mountains of unfolded (but clean!) laundry. But those of us who can know that parenting and working go hand in hand and we look good doing it. (At least in our over-tired imaginations.)

The wall of built-ins in the new office provide storage and a desk.

we just have to make do with something less than desirable for a time, especially if we’re trying to play mom while also enjoying a home career.

Personally, I’ve had a long-time dream of a cozy library style office, but it didn’t seem to be coming to fruition very quickly thanks to first space, then budget and finally time constraints. For more than six years I worked on a folding table stuck wherever I could find space.

Recently I started working on my real office, office however, and I’m pleased to say the project has progressed quickly and I can finally announce that….

I have a complete office, and I love it!

What makes the office so special? Many things. But most importantly, it’s a reflection of all that I do and am in the course of a day, week or year.

The Desk

Of course, the most important element in my new office is a desk. My new desk is part of a wall of built-ins I finished up a couple of weeks ago. The desk is down on the end and it’s only about three and a half feet wide.

I’ve lost almost three feet of space from my six foot table, but that’s okay because I’ve gained it back in the other eight feet of counter top to my left on the built-ins. The desk holds my monitors and keyboard. There’s space for my pens and gum and mouse. Everything else I need has its home elsewhere in the room. The simplicity of the workspace is outstanding.

The Built-In

The largest portion of this room is the new built-in. The long counter top holds the printer and has plenty of space to spread paperwork out as necessary as I sort things. I can wrap presents on it or stack magazines on it. I can sort files or invoices on it. And it’s pretty stained wood!

Under the counter top is eight feet of cabinet and drawer space. Overnight I gained more room than a walk-in closet when it comes to storing files and my stuff I use for various home projects. My tape measure sits next to my scrapbooking paper and my utility knife.

The pedestal table works well for homework and dinner if necessary.

Suddenly all of the office supplies, markers, laptop accessories, CDs and file boxes have a home where they are hidden away. They are no longer stacked in a closet somewhere. Best of all, since it’s all mine, I can find what I need without having to dig past Christmas decorations or fish water (another story for another time.)

Above the cabinets are my bookshelves. I have an entire wall of shelving dedicated to my books. Some are professional, some are grown-up books I read for fun, and many are my young adult and kid books collected for my alter identities of mom and teacher. It’s these shelves that create the “library” feel to the office.

The Workspace

In the center of the library/office, I have a pedestal table and four chairs. As I’ve described previously I use this table for helping two little boys with homework. After all, this is a rather critical function of mom’s workspace. The table can also double as a dining room table if I want it to or additional space for filing and sorting out dozens of Christmas presents.

The Pretty Things

Finally, the best parts of my office are the parts that make it totally unique and mine. In one corner is my giant wingback chair. My grandmother’s antique coffee table makes a terrific end table, and

Antiques and a big chair make the room perfectly personalized.

after only a month, the table is stacked with books I’m working through. The secretary in the other corner is antique as well and holds special things that simply don’t have a home anywhere else in the house – collectibles, special files in the locked drawer, stationary.

The Satisfaction

Most of all, the completed office gives me a tremendous amount of satisfaction. I finally, after six years, feel like I’m working on my own career in my own space. Having a special place that reflects what you’re about makes it more desirable to come to work, especially if you’re tacking on three hours to a day that’s already very full. Often I just look around and smile at the things around me.

Does this make me a better writer? Eh, who knows. One thing I do know is that having an ideal office and working space makes me a very satisfied writer. I’m finally content to know that my office matches my career – unique, customized and totally situated to this freelancing mama lifestyle I live.

I hope everyone is able to enjoy their workspace as much as I’m enjoying mine.

How close are you to your ideal workspace?

Consider the following:

One of the boys jump over the fence.

One of the boys jumps over the fence.

Which one is correct?

Let’s dissect them and see:

The subject in the two sentences is the same. It’s “One”. “Of the boys” is modifying the subject.

So the actual sentence using just the simple subject would be:

One jump over the fence.

One jumps over the fence.

Take out the prepositional phrase and you get:

One jump.

One jumps.

You subject is singular so you use “jumps”. The second one is obviously correct when it’s broken down to this level.

If the sentence changed to:

The boys jump over the fence.

Your subject would be plural and it would be appropriate to use “jump.”

Consider a longer sentence where things aren’t quite as obvious:

Coming home from the race, every one of the track team members want to get an ice cream cone.

For the record, Microsoft Word didn’t flag that sentence as being written incorrectly. There is no green squiggly line underneath it, but it is most certainly wrong.

Take the sentence down the subject and verb: “One want” or if it’s easier “Every one want.”

Wrong!

It should be “One wants.”

If the problem is complicated enough to fool Microsoft Word (which we all know we shouldn’t and can’t rely on, but so many still do), it’s no wonder mistakes get past writers who aren’t proofreading or who aren’t as strong in the language.

Speaking very generally, a multiple subject gets a singular verb. (Boys jump.) A singular subject has what appears to be a plural verb. (Boy jumps.)

This isn’t always true, of course, since like so many things in the English language, the rules are always changing.

Bottom line: Check every sentence you write to ensure that your subject and verb are in agreement. If you can’t tell easily, take that sentence down to the simple subject and verb and compare. Soon you’ll be comfortable with even the most convoluted sentences!

I need a real office space where I feel empowered and professional in order to run my business effectively.  For years I’ve struggled to find the place in my home where was going to create this perfect office set-up.

Freelancing with Family

Over the years I’ve tried any number of set-ups to make this writing career work with my growing family. I started in a shared office with my husband. When my first son was born we moved the two computers into another bedroom. Then my second son was born and we got kicked out of that room, too. We then had two home businesses running out of our bedroom. Naturally we were on different schedules and his music drove me absolutely nuts when I did pretend to sleep with two toddlers in the house.

When we moved, we swore up and down that we would need two distinct working spaces along with the three bedrooms. Naturally, when we arrived in the new house there was a master bedroom, a bedroom for each boy and a small office for my husband who was, at the time, working exclusively at home. Mom, ever the flexible one, got to set up a folding table in the bedroom and pretend it was an office – again.

Settling In

I’ve now been in my house for three years and I’ve had offices in four spots. I worked next to the bed in the master bedroom. I worked in the corner of the master bedroom when we bought new furniture. I worked in the corner of the dining room for a time and briefly, as I was laying hardwood in this room, I worked in the middle of the foyer. But now, the end is very close indeed. I’m going to have the perfect office just as soon as I finish building it.

After staring at a dining room that went almost completely unused, I sold the nicest piece of furniture in my house and cleared out the forsaken dining space. I moved my folding table in and called it my library.

I’m now in the perfect mom spot. I’m literally in the center of the house – I can hear my kids playing above me. I can keep an ear on anything in the oven, and I can stop by and check in on my computer any time I walk through the room.

Making the Perfect Freelancing Office

At this point, it’s just a matter of creating the perfect library setting in my 144 square feet of dining room space. I started with the wood flooring. For about a year I had an old folding table on a new hardwood floor.

Then I moved in an antique secretary I grabbed on Craigslist to dress up the corner. I added some valences to the tall windows along the wall and picked up an excellent chair from Pier One for Christmas thanks to my husband.

My grandmother’s antique marble coffee table makes an excellent end table and the round pedestal table and antique chairs I scored off Craigslist have been refinished and are a great spot for the boys to work on book reports and color (or play Legos) while Mom does a bit of work. In a pinch they can also be used for family meals.

After two years of planning and adding bits and pieces to the dream office, I’m finally on the last big project. I’m creating a wall of built-ins including my desk. The bookshelves have been in place since December. They span a twelve foot wall with space at one end to give headroom over the desk, or rather where the desk will go. My tired, old folding table is sitting there now, holding the spot where I’ll be installing the base cabinets and then the countertop that will serve as the top of the desk.

I am, as I write this, admiring the perfect set-up that is almost complete. I have about three hundred books at my finger tips. I have soft throw pillows and blankets waiting on my chair behind me for the chances I’ll have to read one of those books. My walls are a rich merlot and my floor is oak.

It might have taken me six years, but the home library set-up I’ve dreamed of is finally within reach. It’s a heady experience. The toughest part will probably be letting go of this old table – we’ve been through a lot together after all, and these are our final months together.

It will be a bittersweet moment when the project is complete.

Are you in your ideal working environment?