Journal SlashChick's Journal: Sleeping Off A Cold; Still Too Busy! 3
Well, last weekend we moved all those servers and this weekend my body has finally decided that it's high time I got some sleep. To ensure that I get enough sleep, it has temporarily decided to disable my immune system.
This, of course, happened last night. While I was trying to sleep, my body woke me up and announced that it didn't feel well. When I finally woke up in the morning, I had an awful sore throat -- swollen glands and the whole bit. After deciding that it was too much effort to get out of bed, I went back to sleep and slept pretty much the whole day. Now I'm awake and realizing that I have a whole day's worth of work that didn't get done. Argh!
In May, I gave a friend of mine the lead of a lifetime -- a web design contract for a customer of mine. The contract requires writing, editing, graphic design, and PHP programming skills, which means it's awfully hard to find a single person to fill the role. I'd been doing this contract job (which pays between $1500-$4000/month, depending on how much work there is to be done) since 2002, and I'd finally decided that I wanted the company's website to go in a different direction than my customer did (a bad thing!). I was also getting swamped with work for Simpli and associated companies I'm working more closely with, so I called a meeting with the owner of the company and called it quits. I gave him my friend's name as my recommended successor and promised to stick around for the next month or two in case anyone had any questions.
Simpli quickly grew to take up about 150% of my available time, and I didn't think much more of the contract -- until about two weeks ago, when the complaints started to roll in. Apparently my friend had completely disappeared and the company was left up the proverbial creek.
So I found myself at their office at 10PM on a Friday night, doing work that had needed to be done the week before and realizing that I was completely screwed with regards to time. Already someone from the company had figured out that I actually responded to email, especially when it was regarding things that needed to be posted on the first of the month, and so the work started rolling in. The only problem was that I have no available time whatsoever to do any of this work. "We'll find someone else for next month, but we need you to do this now," was their reply. "This" was approximately 8 hours of work.
Of course, then I got nailed by the stupid cold and ended up sleeping all day today. So now, not only am I faced with about 6.5 hours of work remaining for this company, but I'm faced with all the other work that I need to do for Simpli and a couple remaining website design clients (one of whom is starting to get really pissed at me.)
It's 10:30PM on a Sunday and things are not looking good from my vantage point.
In an attempt to remember some good things about my life, I am going to make a list of all the exciting things I would like to spend money on. Of course, I have no problem spending thousands of dollars on business-related expenses (I spent over $14,000 in August alone on business-related expenses), but I hardly ever spend anything on myself. So here is a list I've been meaning to make of stuff that is NOT deductible that I'd like to spend just for me:
1) (The big one!) Hot tub. I knew when I moved in to my current residence that I'd be getting a hot tub; there's already a platform for it in my backyard and hot tubs are just cool anyway. About a month ago, I put down a $500 deposit on one. I'm trying to pay off my credit cards before I buy it, but at this rate I'm going to have to give in and just go for it. ($6000)
2) Car repairs and upgrades. My poor leetle zoom has some problems and general upgrades I'd like to make. Since I don't have a car payment any more, I've funneled that money into Simpli instead. That needs to stop. Upgrades include painting and installing his new rear bumper ($400), new hood and paint ($500), new struts ($1200), and dammit I want an XM satellite radio and a CD player that plays MP3s ($400?) I also want a full interior and exterior detail since he's never had that done before ($200). The leetle guy has over 80,000 miles on him and deserves to get treated nicely for once. I plan on keeping him for a while, so I need to treat him better.
3) A new TV. This one has been on my list for a while. I am sick of my Sony 27", but just can't justify the price for a plasma TV or projector. It's still lower on the priority list than the two above items, but is definitely a priority after I get the hot tub paid off. ($2000)
That makes me feel a bit better... now, back to work!
hope you feel better and get caught up soon (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
same story, different coast. (Score:2)