An offer of gainful employment (editing a fantasy novel) and a lesson learnt

Dear Diary,

So this person reached out, after finding me online, asking for a quote for editing a fantasy novel. I prefer to negotiate in person (or at least, virtually). Email, messaging or texts do not make well for conducive business practices. Anyway, I replied that we should hash a deal out, amicably, reasonably. I did, however, make a mistake. I laid out my credentials (these were already on the editing website). It turns out that this particular author is already a bona fides author, holds two degrees (in genetics...) and has been a professional editor and book formatter (among other things, usually bio-tech) for several years. In retrospect I shouldn't have given it the large one, but instead conducted a background check on the person in question, then answered, from a more well-informed perspective.

When you do business face to face, you get a sense of people, what they're like. When you've lived on the streets for 15 years you get to know people. There was a time when I met more people in one single day than most people meet in a week, a month, a lifetime. Up at the crack of dawn, out in the city sprawl (making music), then socialising at night, doing it all again the next day. There was a time when I could (correctly) guess someone's Sun sign (astrology) every time. Now it's hit or miss. I can still, however, acurately discern someone's age within a year or two up first meeting (Although I always take a half a dozen years off an women I happen to meet, should the question of age arise). As an aside, living without a phone or a watch, and living outside for many years meant I could acurately determine the time of day - or night - within just a few seconds, no more than a minute or two: the perks of being a hobo. Anyway: I prefer to do business face to face. Yet this is not France in the 90's. It's Dark Age Britain during the Neo-Plague on the eve of a new Cold War. The new "Normal". One has to adapt. A smile and a handshake just doesn't cut it in this day and age. Those days are gone. It's now more digital than ever.

Yet even digitally, there are things one does and doesn't do. I really made some whopping mistakes at university and could have and very much should have been more used to Netiquette than I have been. One learns from one's mistakes (I'm not like Bligh and cast of the Lord of the Flies). In any case, it's a learning experience.

Right now I'm wading through my translation and really enjoying it. It's nice to do something you love for a living, even if during the Abbasid Caliphate a translator would earn several thousand times (500 gold dinars a month) more than a bona fides scholar earns today translating a Latin manuscript. This is not the heyday of the Umayyad Emirate in Al Andalus: it's Dark Age Britain. A native born well-educated slave in England 2022 is worth less than a brute, crooked blow-in or the simpleton from the village.