The invoice went out with a request to raise the limit.
We had agreed to fifteen hours every two weeks. After getting into the environment, I thought twenty hours made more sense. There was enough work to support about ten hours a week, at least until the high-priority projects were finished.
The list was already growing.
A firewall needed to be installed at the colocation facility. Linux Virtual Server needed to be set up, which meant changing parts of the network. Monitoring needed work. The systems needed cleanup and a more consistent operating baseline.
I was not trying to manufacture hours. I was looking at the gap between the current environment and what it would take to keep it reliable.
The side engagement had started only two weeks earlier with a signed NDA and a request for accounts. Now I was sending an invoice and proposing a regular monthly presence. That was fast, but the problems were not waiting for a long onboarding process.
This was happening around the full-time Beatport job. The consulting hours lived in mornings, evenings, and weekends. A fifteen-hour cap could disappear quickly when access problems, network changes, and production issues all landed in the same two-week period.
I asked whether the invoice format worked and whether the client was comfortable moving from fifteen hours to twenty. The current rate would stay the same. We could revisit the total once the urgent work was done.
This was consulting under my own name. I sent a Word invoice and asked a direct question: there is more to fix, do you want me to keep going?