I mentioned that my son’s medical program would interfere with my business because it required a big time investment on my part along with other things. Add to that managing the usual stuff like the other kids, work (or lack thereof), household responsibilities, on and on.

After two weeks of the program, I reached a breaking point. Like, the car ran out of gas plus it needed a serious washing as it looked battered and worn despite its young age. Thank goodness, my clients understood my availability. But that didn’t keep me from feeling bad about not working full-time.

So I had to make adjustments to my work and life so I could feel less guilty, prevent stress overload, and serve my clients as best as I could during this time. Here’s what worked for me:

• Email clients: I let them know of the situation and explained I needed to make priority adjustments. All of them understood.
• Take care of quick hits ASAP: One client sends me five minute editing tasks. So when she sends one in, I do it right there as it’s as fast as reading an email. Plus, it feels great to have one thing done.
• Exercise: I stick to my tennis drill and match schedule. I had to find a sub for one match, but made the rest of them. Thank goodness I have a sweet dog. She forces me to take a walk mid-day. If I don’t, then I’ll spend more time cleaning up after her than walking her.
• Listen to music: I’ve been listening to more music in the past month than I have in the past year. As a deaf person, I don’t have a passion for music like most folks do. But I’ve put in more hours on the road than usual and my car comes with an adapter that plugs right into my iPod. Furthermore, I discovered a iTunes lyrics feature that revived my enjoyment of music. The hard part… discovering new songs.
• Stay on track with the family: Although family is the reason I’m spending more time away from the office than usual, we still have our usual daily activities and goings-on. Gotta keep moving with those as they keep things consistent. Despite the unusual schedule, I managed to work on a jigsaw puzzle and played a couple of board games with my family.
• Cut out tasks where possible. I cut back on blogging and visiting blogs (I know… I hate missing out on community), but these will always be there. The web site won’t come crashing and my blog buddies don’t take attendance. I also limit my non-profit organization officer duties to urgent and time sensitive things. The rest can wait as I have all year.

Just thinking of the week ahead (last week before school starts) overwhelms me. Meetings, registration, several gatherings, meet the teacher, and on and on. I check my calendar to see what’s on the agenda for the next day. But then I pull back and focus on here and now while preparing for whatever comes early tomorrow.

How do you pull through stressful times?

Frustration builds while reviewing this week’s calendar. Every day this week has something not routine and not work-related scheduled (and most of last week, too). I can only reschedule one appointment, but it’s not enough to lighten the load.

So what does a lone freelancer do? To prevent myself from going crazy and sacrificing sleep (if I do this, then I might as well mark myself as unavailable for the entire day after a short night’s sleep), I work through my fewer hours than usual:

• Cancel or reschedule appointments, if possible.
• Prioritize (Duh!)
• Contact regular clients notifying them of my reduced availability.
• Cut time spent on self-assigned work like blogging, Twittering, and social network sites. While these sound like time wasters — they aren’t. It’s part of the freelancer’s marketing toolbox.
• Be strict about fooling around on the Internet (This is the time waster.).

Even with deadlines, the freelancer should be able to plan the week to meet them while saving less urgent work for later. Most of the time, the freelancer meets the deadlines and then has time left over to work on the lower prioritized stuff.

I feel better knowing I will accomplish a few things this week, though less than usual. It’s better than panicking and getting nothing done.

Wristwatches Get the Back of the Hand says that more people are skipping the wristwatches and relying on handheld devices for the time. Why am I posting this in Bionic Ear Blog? I stopped wearing a watch because of my cochlear implant.

??????

I understand the confusion. Because of the implant, I got a medical bracelet that says my name, that I have a cochlear implant, not to do an MRI, and I read lips. I wear it on my watch-wearing wrist. When I tried it on my left wrist, it was making too much noise and bothered me when I wrote. I be a southpaw, indeedy. [ Read more... ]

Quickly: if you or anyone you know is familiar with WEP, WAP, IPSEC, please help. Email me if you know of experts and I’ll contact them. Thanks.

I’ve been so busy lately that as soon as I remember to do something, I forget. For the past couple of weeks, I wanted to write the meryl’s notes newsletter for June. It looks like I’m going to miss it as there’s no chance I’ll get it done and distributed today. Since the newsletter is informal, I didn’t want to kill myself to get it done when I have two others to distribute and a third in the making. Heck, I didn’t have time to write my daughter, who is at camp, an email yesterday (first time I’ve missed since she’s been gone).

Been getting to know Coldfusion (cfm). Am having a blast. I use the concepts I learned to create dynamic pages in PHP. It’s tricky since PHP and CFM are different, so when I find a problem in the code, I can’t use PHP as guidance. Databases don’t come to me naturally. It’s weird because I love geeky stuff and software, but my brain isn’t wired for it. But I did get the database working with Coldfusion and have other ideas for other projects. I’ll report on how I do things in cfm soon.

Reading Why I Deleted Email Interviews inspired my newest article, Why I Am Stuck Doing E-mail Interviews. Donna’s article is excellent and that’s why I was motivated to write my perspective. I try to educate people on the idiosyncrasies of leading life as a person who is deaf at Bionic Ear Blog. In fact, doing this blog helped me discover things about me that my hearing loss impacted. I grew up with an “I can do anything except talk on the phone without the relay” attitude. Now, I’m older and wiser and accept that’s not the case.
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