The problem with freelancing.

In the past few months, I've earned a bunch of money writing. That's the good news.

Now the bad news: I haven't yet collected a dime of it.

Oh, I've done the edits and submitted my invoices. But my well-deserved checks are either "in processing" or "in the mail." To date, not a single penny has been added to my checking register from any work after August 4th.

The worst part is that I should have had one of these checks months ago. I invoiced for the article in May, for goodness' sake. But the invoice got lost, the link wasn't in the system, yadda yadda yadda (add in whatever accounts payable excuse is needed), and so my check was never cut.

And despite the mistake being on their end, I was informed that I'd still have to wait 4-6 weeks for a new one. 'Cause, like, that's their payment cycle. Apparently, you cannot, under any circumstances, fuck with a corporate payment cycle. It might change the future as we know it. So you just have to wait and hope that whatever mistake made them miss your invoice the first time won't happen again.

So I waited. And I just found out (finally!) that this particular check was cut last week. My editor, being a total peach, decided to express mail it to me to make up for the delay. So when I got the tracking number, I immediately headed on over to the tracking website, expecting to see that my check was only hours away from delivery.

But, um, instead, it just was scanned in California. Why something would go from New York to Germany by way of California is just beyond me. My quest for this single check is now seriously bordering on the ridiculous. Will I ever receive it? Am I just destined to be poor forever?

These are the days that I really, really miss my regularly scheduled full-time paychecks.