In January, I intended to take the car in for its inspection (APK). I also planned to move my home office into the living room, so our little one could have his own bedroom. Knowing that Windows 10 will reach end-of-life in October, I wanted to start gradually building a powerful new work system.

My setup plan was to have a main desktop for working from home, while continuing to use my laptop and external hard drive for on-location photography. I also aimed to upgrade the drives in my NAS to larger ones. An easy job thanks to the RAID setup. It would be time-consuming, but doable. And there was no rush. After all, it was January.

The invoices I sent out at the beginning of the year, for hosting services and maintenance contracts for about 30 websites, combined with some personal savings, were supposed to give me a solid start. New assignments and monthly contributions from private funds would cover the rest.

I started measuring the new workspace. My old desk didn’t fit, so I invested in a new work setup. You may have seen the photos on social media, a new desk, a few small wooden drawer units for accessories, and some extra IKEA boxes for organizing.

Most of my photography gear, softboxes and fixed lighting, was neatly stored in boxes under our bed. One of the living room walls got a fresh coat of paint, I moved my guitars from the office, and rearranged the framed photos to blend the old and new together. The former office is now officially the kid’s playroom. Raph gets his toys there, and usually puts them back when he’s done.

A new storage cabinet was supposed to be next. One with seven drawers, to replace much of the overflow of IKEA boxes. So far, so good.

But then things changed.

We’re living in unpredictable times, and unfortunately, not everyone paid their invoices on time. And I get it, everyone is struggling. But my business is small. Because of personal choices I had to make for the sake of my (care-dependent) family. Especially in light of Geeke’s progressive muscle disease (she suffers from Steinert’s disease) I’m happy if I can reach an annual turnover of about €7,000. It’s not much, but it’s enough to cover business expenses. and a bit more. That means I rely heavily on timely payment of every invoice I send, big or small.

Because important payments were delayed (some by as much as six months), I had to make difficult decisions. In consultation with my family, we used private savings to cover business bills. The car is now sitting idle because I couldn’t afford the inspection. The storage cabinet was skipped. The new PC? Put on hold.

Then came the technical issues:
In month 4, my work laptop failed.
In month 6, the file system of my external work drive became corrupted.

The data is still there, I just can’t access it. I’ve managed to continue working with a backup PC (an old i5 with 8 GB RAM and integrated graphics) and a small 1TB external drive for photography. I’m still able to do web work from my NAS, but photo and graphic work is very limited, and video editing is practically impossible. Most modern software simply exceeds the capabilities of my current setup. My music production plans are also on hold due to lack of storage.

Even so, I didn’t stop working.
In the meantime, I’ve been developing tools to help me with mu current and future projects. Some examples:

• QR Code Generator (max. 3 per session):
  https://qrgen.vascofialho.nl/
• Website font detector:
  https://whathefont.vascofialho.nl/
• Lorem Ipsum text generator:
  https://lipsum.vascofialho.nl/
• HTML-to-plaintext converter:
  https://htmlstripper.vascofialho.nl/

Work in progress:

• Wayback Downloader (retrieve websites from archive.org):
  https://tools.vascofialho.nl/tools/wayback-downloader/index.php
• Email header analyzer (detect origin of spam):
  https://tools.vascofialho.nl/tools/email-origin-detector/index.html

I’ve also developed a few WordPress plugins:

• Very Simple Copyright Shortcode:
  https://www.vascofialho.nl/wordpress/plugins/very-simple-copyright-shortcode/
  Code: https://github.com/vascofialho-nl/very-simple-copyright-shortcode
• CF7 Date Placeholder (for Contact Form 7):
  https://www.vascofialho.nl/wordpress/plugins/date-placeholder-field-for-contact-form-7/
  Code: https://github.com/vascofialho-nl/vjfnl_cf7-date-placeholder

Right now, I’m also working on an alternative to WPML (multilingual WordPress), and I’m sketching ideas for a lightweight CRM system to replace tools like Asana and Evernote — something I could later offer under license. This CRM is still conceptual; no code exists yet. Building these tools takes time, time I can’t invoice. It’s time I consider an investment.

This means I now urgently need new income streams:
New web or photography assignments, or support through donations.

Here’s what I can do for you:

✅ WordPress websites
✅ Hosting & domain registration
✅ Site transfers and recovery
✅ Technical maintenance and backups
✅ Custom plugin development
✅ Portrait and family photography
✅ Business photography and branding
✅ Web-based tools tailored to your needs

If any of these services interest you, you can reach out via email: info@vascofialho.nl
Full story (Dutch): https://www.vascofialho.nl/blogs/work/investeer-mee/

Not in need of services but still want to help?
You can support my work through this donation page:
https://www.gofundme.com/f/investeer-mee

For each donation, I’d be happy to offer a matching service in return where possible. Every bit helps, and sharing this story is also deeply appreciated.

Thank you for reading and supporting.