Several payments turned up yesterday, and I found four of the books on the textbook list at a used bookstore, so I’m feeling less panicky today. I also got a few more assignments, but I’m trying really hard not to think that I have to do them all today.

Yesterday was, frankly, ridiculous. From 5:30 to 8:30 I had a sort of mixture of business and personal stuff. I checked my mail and found an invitation to apply for an ongoing gig with a company in the capitol and a group of sales letters from The Northerners needing editing and an expression of concern from the chocolatier requiring response, but also stuff from my kids and friends. I made my husband’s coffee and packed his lunch and fixed breakfast and got dressed and changed my dentist appointment (something came up with work).

At 8:30 I got started with my writing assignments and had phone calls from the college and from the chocolatier about his dev site. One assignment finished, I did the blogs for the day and Twitter for almost all the people I tweet for and fielded emails from concerned clients and started a series of tweets and emails in search of a designer for a proposal that went out yesterday. I got a weekend assignment from The Computer Guy and he also asked me to follow up with a client, and I followed up with a couple of prospective clients as well.

I stopped for lunch around 1;00 and then got back to writing, and then the temporary crown I’ve been whining about popped off and I dealt with that (sort of) via IM and did interviews for my articles and took a check to the bank and #2 son’s book list to the used bookstore and then got home in time to greet my husband and have a scrambled egg and then got an urgent writing assignment. I had one last phone interview with a guy I’d been trying to track down all day, and then drove to do a two-hour training session for a client with a new blog.

At 9:00 p.m. when I got home, I did the urgent assignment and sent it along to the client, asked the designer to shoot the files for a new site to the webmaster, made a quesadilla, and went to bed.

It struck me that, had I been in an office on a salary, all the communication I did would have added up to a busy and productive day, without any writing jobs at all.

What’s more, if I never got communications from prospective clients and current clients and former clients, then I wouldn’t have writing assignments either, so I shouldn’t think of those things as unbillable interruptions.

Well, the dental and textbook issues, perhaps. But the rest of it, that’s business.

However, I am planning today to work on the writing projects without checking email from 7:30 to noon. This is the time I plan to be gone from my computer — commuting, teaching, gym, and lunch — beginning next week. So nothing dreadful should happen if I take it as concentrated writing time today. I have to finish up those three articles and a marketing kit for some Canadians, plus blogs and Dark Art shenanigans. I also have to go to the bank. Then I’ll GTD process the stacks of paper that have piled up in my office, and stop working at 5:00. Really.

I will have to work a bit this weekend. However, I’m hoping to join Janalisa tomorrow at the annual shindig, and perhaps even to work a bit on the quilt which so obviously isn’t going to get finished before school starts.

Yesterday’s lunch? #1 son drove through Backyard Burgers, and I had a bacon cheddar burger with my bento box of squash strips and blueberries. So yeah, the bento box lunch makeover has not been an unqualified success this week.