Jam tomorrow, but a bit of bread and butter today would be handy

Yesterday was the first working day in almost three years that I've not been on a retainer or working to an open PO. In once sense it felt good. One client's work had moved from 'project' to 'business-as-usual', while with the other, I'd fulfilled the brief of training up someone on the inside of the organisation to take up the reins for IC. In most other senses it felt bad as I'd communicated myself out of two jobs.

In the great scheme of things I'd be slipping seamlessly into other work without even breaking stride. I wish I could say that was the case. I had the opportunity to take up a contract role this summer, but passed on it. As I found out more about it, I realised I was less and less suited to it - after 13 years of doing my own thing, I've found I'm exceedingly reluctant to work in-house for someone else.

I passed up the chance in part because a couple of other opportunities were out there for interesting projects that played to my consultancy/tactical strengths - both give me the chance to get in to a business, work with their IC people to set clear objectives, build a plan and work on some of the tactical stuff (and then hand the work back in house once my part's delivered). Both opportunities are still there, both will happen...but not quite yet.

I'm doing some summer school teaching for the next five weeks, and also bits and pieces of tactical IC stuff - plus starting to work on a b2b White Paper. But I've got time on my hands now and that makes me uneasy. While there's plenty of jam tomorrow, I need a bit more bread and butter today.

So, if anyone's in need of an additional pair of hands on IC projects over the next seven weeks, please do get in touch at mark.shanahan@leapfrogcomms.com. I'm good at what I do; bad at marketing myself; and completely rubbish at thumb twiddling.