Did Late-August Arrive in Mid-August?

It feels like the dog days came early.
I could be wrong. One of the dangers of freelancing is that I sit here alone in a room—well, you could count the three cats, as I certainly would—and come up with ideas about what is happening out there in the universe. I’m not sure that the notions imagined correspond with reality. Even when I warn myself about that, though, I cannot help coming up with a sense of what’s happening in the city and the nation and the would, what the mood is.
Especially when it comes to the city. And the sense I get on a Monday morning, the one that passed by relatively uneventfully a few hours ago, is that not a lot is getting done in the offices of my hometown. It’s not that I think that everybody is out of town. I worked 50 or so weeks a year in an office for too many years to believe that there are too many completely empty workplaces. But I do have the suspicion that not a lot is happening. People are in Wait Mode, getting done the absolute necessities and not much more. Returning my phone calls not necessarily having scored a spot as an absolute necessity. Unfortunately.
I read recently in one of those not very helpful stories about job-searching that it’s best to go full speed ahead in August. You don’t want to be one of those jerks who is calling prospective employers on the days after Labor Day, announcing to the world that you are back in the game. Better to make it clear during the dog days that one is ready, willing and able to rejoin the workforce.
That sounds sensible to me. Right now I’m after an array of writing assignments, from the full-time gig to the very-very-freelance assignment, but the editors I’m eager to harass are in Wait Mode. Unless, perish the thought, it’s just me.