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.
Good news about some of the payments arriving, and finding the used textbooks — hurrah! On the other hand, there’s no question but that your description of what you did yesterday qualifies for a Ridiculousness Award; it sounds horrible. Congratulations to you for having managed to get from one end of it to the other!
@ozarque –
I think the key is to figure out how not to keep doing it.