Photo credit Sheila VooDoo

I had surgery last week (doing fine, thank you), so I prepared ahead of time not knowing how much time I would miss work and blogging. I had no desire or energy to work for three days. By the fourth day, I could do a little work. Yesterday (one week after the surgery), I worked all morning and wore myself out by lunch time.

Here are the tasks I did to prepare my business for a little hiatus. It’d work for vacation and other times off from working. Unexpected time off is a different story (you can prepare for the unexpected with a contingency plan).

1. Notify clients: I emailed all of my regular clients about three to four weeks ahead of time.
2. Get ahead: Wherever possible, I wrote extra articles and completed assignments that would be due during the week of the surgery and after. I also found time to do work on the weekend before the surgery.
3. Finish projects: I had a couple of projects that had an end. I finished both before surgery.
4. Schedule a blog post: Christina Katz saved me on this one. We had an interview that I entered in my blog before the surgery and scheduled it to go live while I was in recovery. It’s OK to publish one time during the week, which is what I have done for the past month or so.
5. Use a laptop: My laptop plays a regular role in my business even though I rarely travel or work in coffee shops. It allows me to work in in bed, on the sofa or elsewhere in the house where I can be comfortable.
6. Send email with a cell phone: I couldn’t decide between a BlackBerry or iPhone. I’m glad I went with the BlackBerry because it handles email better. I am rarely too sick to send a short email message. Although I didn’t have a BlackBerry at the time, I used a cell phone to send an email to clients when I unexpectedly went in the hospital. If your cell phone’s email app isn’t great, try mail2web.com’s mobile app. Google also offers mobile Gmail for different phones.
7. Do administrative tasks: Are your invoices due? Do you need to balance your bank account? Do you need to submit time sheets? Do all of this beforehand.
8. Transfer assignments: I always have an editing assignment around the first of the month. I told the writer to send the articles to another editor since I would be out. I’m grateful that some clients I work for have teams so we can back each other up.
9. Delete less important emails: I deleted email newsletters and other informational emails before, during and after to take the pressure off of me in keeping up. I also read some newsletters in bed with my phone or laptop when I couldn’t do much else. You might consider changing some of your subscriptions to “vacation” status, but I never do this as I have too many.
10. Remember it’s OK not to work: Avoid putting so much pressure on yourself to get things done, blog or participate in social networking. You need to take care of you! It doesn’t matter if it’s recovery from illness or catching up after vacation. It’s easier to get your groove back when you keep it low key.

What other tasks did you do to prepare for time off?

Tags: health, surgery, vacation

A previous blog entry discusses Freelance vs. Full Time Writing. In the past couple of weeks, I’ve been discovering a big benefit of working as a freelancer. My mom role collided with my freelancer role when my son’s medical challenges erupted.

Not to worry — he’s fine. I don’t mind talking about it, but it doesn’t belong in a public forum living in cyberspace for all eternity. Feel free to contact me privately if you’d like to know details.

My spouse and I had been struggling since spring trying to figure out how to help him and what would be best for him this summer. We thought we had it figured out only to find the program had no room for him. We put him in two programs and they worked OK. But I had to take time out of the day to deal with some incidences.

Two more opportunities came up and I had to investigate them … during the day. Yesterday, he started a three week program that made oil companies happy as we drove through lots of traffic to get there. The program could make a big difference for him and it requires parents to attend meetings every morning and afternoon — so count the commute and meetings and you have a formula for eating up lots of working time.

My spouse works for a corporation, so I’ve felt bad about him having to attend these meetings and miss a lot of work. Imagine if I had still worked for a corporation and having to make up all the missed time or take vacation days for something that is no vacation.

So I go to most of the meetings and my spouse goes to a couple of them. We appreciate having my flexibility, but it doesn’t ease our feeling guilty for our jobs. I emailed my regular clients to let them know what’s going on and that I would prioritize work as needed.

Needless to say, I’m running around with my virtual head cut off and doing only what I need to do for the next couple of weeks. That means sacrificing my social networking including blogs, Twitter, and elsewhere. I won’t blog as often. I’m all about getting the kids where they need to be and keeping the work going.

How do you handle unexpected job interruptions?

• Merriam-Webster releases new words to its Collegiate Dictionary including…
  • Air quotes: My brother makes fun of me whenever I do this — which ain’t often.
  • Edamame: What took so long?
  • Fanboy
  • Malware: Yuck, but at least we all know what its name is other than dirty rotten stinkin’ software.
  • Mental health day: Gee, “I don’t feel well” doesn’t cut it anymore? Or is it a way around that so you don’t curse yourself? After all, “mental” doesn’t have to mean a cold.
  • Texas Hold’em
  • Webinar: Now maybe we’ll stop hearing the 20 variations of this.
  • And for the most interesting one: mondegreen. Along the lines of a malaprop except in this case it’s when someone misheard something not the unintentional misuse of a word or phrase (pornography instead of photography).
• Making the Most of Tough Times: Never, ever become complacent.
• Copyblogger Tagline Clinic
• 21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky
• Copywriting: The 10 Magic Words
• 3 Steps to Successful Writing on the Web

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 70 Amazing Business Cards
• Rice Field Art
• Kid safe browsers
• Fuel Savings Calculator
• Vaudeville Nation: I loved reading about vaudeville and catching TV programs about it. I still have an old tape from 1983 called Parade of Stars Playing the Palace. I wish it would come out on DVD as the tape is full of commercials and weather interruptions. Plus, the quality is going downhill.
• Take a Staycation as an alternative to pricey vacations.

I went to my parents’ in Fort Worth last Wednesday and returned yesterday. I took my laptop and a couple of books that I’m working on for getAbstract. None of them got used or read. My parents don’t have a wireless network and I forgot my USB drive, so I couldn’t get files to my laptop.

Sure, I could’ve connected my laptop to the network by taking the cable out of Mom’s computer and putting into mine. But someone in the family was almost always on the Internet. My daughter chatting and playing with MySpace, my son doing puzzles, Mom taking a break and playing games, and siblings checking work stuff.

Who wants to fool with a cable when all this is going on? I never planned to take a complete vacation from work, but that’s what happened. At least, I kept up with my emails so I didn’t fall behind there. Otherwise, I’d be a stress ball. I think a lot of people took it easy for the long weekend beginning with Good Friday, which kept email more manageable.
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