What I would need

Could not sleep so I did the maths properly on going out on my own, with a spreadsheet, at eleven at night, like a lunatic. Fourteen clients at my rate, minus the room on Wall Street or somewhere cheaper, minus the insurance which is the thing nobody tells you about until you are looking at it, minus the three weeks in August when literally nobody books an appointment, minus the first four months of building a list. It works. On paper it works with room to spare. I sat looking at the bottom right cell for a long time. And then I closed it, because the number has never been the problem, and I have now built this spreadsheet three times in two years and been surprised by the same answer each time, which means I am not building it to find out. I am building it to have done something about the feeling. What I would actually need is for one of the two incomes in this house to be boring. Mine is boring. His is not, and cannot be, and he would be miserable if it were. Which is not a thing anybody did wrong. It is just the arithmetic of being with somebody whose work has weather.