Light at the end of the tunnel?

Or is that just the headlights of an 18-wheeler coming straight at us?

I did my quarterly taxes the other day and this year continues apace. When all is made and spent, it should be as good as, or better than, last year. And last year was a good year. Which is great, considering how things looked for a couple of months there back around November-January.

But I buckled down and really focused, did some marketing, declined some theater opportunities that might have been a distraction from earning my keep and, lo and behold, all's well that ... okay "ends well" may be a bit premature, but the immediate future -- six months or so -- looks just fine.

And we keep seeing signs. The stock market picking up, job losses slowing, occasional inklings of consumer confidence and mini-boosts in various housing numbers. So all of that has made me pretty confident lately. Confident enough to forgo the staycation and take an actual vacation.

On the other hand, though, grim news continue to come in, both statistically and anecdotally. People I know being laid off after holding out through successive rounds of purges over the past year. And many, many companies continuing to go out of business.

I hope I wasn't premature. I hope projects and new business continue to flow in as they have this year. But a good chunk of my income -- maybe half -- happened to come from three big windfall projects. Not windfalls in the sense that they just fell in my lap -- I did have to work for them, after all.

I just bid this week on a solid six-month project that would be great to get, but I can't count on that. I think when I get back I need to ratchet up the marketing again. It's way too easy when you're busy to justify not tending to new business.

And when you don't do that, you risk getting squashed by the semi.