Proposals can get you in big trouble. I have made a few personal ones- none of them worked out. Better said, they all worked out to one degree or another, but the outcomes had nothing to do with the initial going-in expectations. The business ones are different- I know how that process works, and while painful, they have results I can understand.

Win-lose. Binary. It is good to be busy- there was a long dry spell as the customer tried to deal with conflicting guidance on how it could spend money, or not spend it, as the case may be. It is a strange landscape: the money had flowed in the usual streams (write me if you want to talk about Major Force Program 2, 3 and the Overseas Contingency Operations accounts, hahaha) up until Sequestration loomed, and then we were all paralyzed like Air Traffic Control officers on furlough.

Now things have lurched into more artificially-inspired but quite real activity.

Oh, insert disclaimer here: “I am not a Republican…” Wait, wrong one! “I am not complaining, I am happy to have a job, and find a great deal of satisfaction in supporting our forces in the field even if I am not one of them at the moment. I recognize that this has been a good second career and an honorable one, and we here in Washington have avoided nearly all the travail the rest of the nation has experienced since 2008.”

That said, “Proposal Heck” is not where I want to be this morning- while it is still morning, anyway.

I managed to get through the entire Friday (Friday! The New Saturday!) without falling asleep at the desk due to exhaustion while ticking off conference calls, one by one, dealing with the big and unexpected solicitations that issued through the week from our Government customer. I had a couple writing projects that go along with Proposal Heck, and Saturday (Saturday! The New Monday!) and Sunday would feature more meetings and a Red Team review of our proposal, which is not quite as much fun as a trip to the dentist for a root canal.

I blinked as five came and went and finally the last call had beaten the last issue of the day to death and I could get out. Home or Willow?

God, I was tired. But the hell with it. It is going to be a working weekend and I thought it might be pleasant to go see the people who live in a realer world that were going to have some time off.

I wandered over to Willow to see the usual suspects. I found a hook under the bar for my backpack and sat down next to Jon-without, whose placid demeanor and rakish bow tie- personally knotted- always helps to put the day in perspective.

Then the Other Russian showed up, and I frowned.

I feel like I am being stalked. I get it. With business as tight as it has been, any approach to advantage is fair game, even if I am the target. That does not mean I have to like it. Willow has served as a sort of living room for me over the last five years, and I felt my personal space being violated. I blinked hard and tried to consider a post-Willow world. I could not quite wrap my brain around the concept. Maybe it is time.

Stalkers aside, it was good to see the Usual Suspects. Jamie was back from Boston and planted with a certain luminescent aspect that could have been a reflection of the lowering light of the Spring sun that really, really was trying to beat back the last claws of the Winter that won’t quit. She is commuting to Boston these days for her consulting job, and apparently it had not been a good week.

“Maybe metropolitan-size post traumatic shock?” I asked.

She said she didn’t know about that, except that everyone seemed cranky in Beantown. The Lovely Bea provided a gracious presence on the other side of Jon-without, Old Jim held court at the apex of the Amen Corner, while Chanteuse Mary his attractive other half worked some sort of deal with her pal Judith at one of the cocktail tables across the aisle from the bar.

It actually turned into a sort of old home week, with Ann-Marie and Brian from Pentagon days appearing at the mid-section of the bar. If it had not been for the Other Russian hanging over my shoulder I think I might have relaxed and got with the general sense of merriment.

Instead, I got tense. That is not what I was looking for. I finished my second glass of Happy Hour White and decided to trudge back to the garage at the office and go home. I needed some sleep, and there was a writing project looming for Saturday- that and de-cluttering the unit.

Proposal heck. Hell, it is a paycheck.

Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com