Thinking into a New Income Bracket

Remember that scared feeling I had a couple of days ago because I had the opportunity to do a new kind of work? Well, it was an interpreting job and I was so excited I was frightened to death about it. See, this came like a DAY after I decided that I needed to re-evaluate my fees and try branching out in new directions. Poof, like magic this job came up!

Interpreting-- Wow! Getting paid for something I do nearly every day for free. You wouldn't believe how often I have to turn from one person to the other and explain what the other person just said, but it's always informal, and so automatic that it never seems like work enough to be paid for. So when Marina brought up this possibility it seemed so Hard. Because when you attach money to something you do anyway, you start to think about what the expectations are for the people paying (must be perfect, no mistakes, must know every word ever uttered in both languages).

So my real fear was not the work itself, but the guilt associated with putting a price on something that I do as normally as breathing air and feeling that if I ask for money for it, I probably won't be up to the clients' expectations. If you don't charge and they don't like it, well tough patooties!

But I decided I needed to change all that, I needed to be worth it, and come up with a price that communicated I was indeed a professional (the fact that I switch between Italian and English all the time should actually communicate fluency and experience, but I don't give myself credit for that.). I did this by consulting my business owner girlfriends-- Marina and Klementina. The funny thing is, when it comes to putting a fair price on things, none of us felt 100% confident.. Isn't that nuts? But we were able to kind of psych ourselves up and convince each other... Is it because we're perfectionists? We have a self-esteem problem?

Well, by the end of the second day I was feeling so good about that job and had rehearsed my non-chalant answer to the question "are you available for the job" with a very high  fair hourly rate.

But that call never came. The client cancelled. They said to send a bill anyway, but well, while I can get my head around upping my price to something respectable, getting paid for nothing, I'm not quite there.

I am not disappointed, though. I have totally changed my perspective and am thinking higher than I used to. I also realized that when it comes to these matters, it's important to talk about it and create a community. I can't wait until our girl financial group has its first meeting in September.