Deadline crunch time: What's not to love?

I love being a writer and I love freelancing.  Don't get me wrong.  But along with the feast-or-famine income, there are insanely busy days to offset the days where you can rearrange your schedule to, say, get your oil changed or have lunch with a friend who's in from out of town.

Today has been one of the former kind, the insanely busy variety, and it's not over yet -- I'm just here to take a brain break

I actually ended up having to rearrange my schedule in order to devote the day to meeting deadlines.  I'm just grateful that today, of all days, I could do that, since I'm off from my nanny job this week.

Procrastinating on making a call...

I am procrastinating today, big-time. Remember that looming deadline I mentioned? Well, in order to write the article, I have to do two short phone interviews — and I really, really don't want to.

It's too bad about the computer problems, because if I had started this a little earlier, I might have been able to get a hold of both people via email. I've just sent emails to both of them in the hopes that it might still work out that way, or at least to break the ice regarding a phone interview — although I suppose the emails could have been just another way of procrastinating!

Don't worry, though — I'll get it done, and on time, too!

My weekend has been hijacked!

I've been playing catch-up all week, trying to get back into my work routine after nearly two weeks away. So far it's been fairly trying, which means I have some work to finish up on this weekend.

Unfortunately, our dryer chose last night to die on us, which complicated my weekend plans quite a bit. (It's been squeaking intermittently for about eight months, so we knew it was coming -- just not now.) We spent a considerable chunk of our morning trying to figure out what the model number is (can you believe it's not on the dryer at all?!), researching dryer components, and visiting a local used appliance and repair shop.

Ultimately, we decided the dryer -- which is at least twenty years old and rather basic -- wasn't worth trying to fix. The repairs would have been only about $70 less than the refurbished dryer we bought (which is considerably newer, I might add, not to mention considerably nicer), and although we might have been able to fix it ourselves, it no doubt would have cost us an entire day -- not to mention a week's worth of frustration.

The delivery crew brought the new dryer (and took the old one away) just a little bit ago. In the end I think this little escapade cost us about four hours, but unfortunately I babysit tonight so I'm on a bit of a time schedule. Luckily, I only have a couple of priority jobs to do this weekend, so I'll just concentrate on getting those done.

Meeting deadlines, suffering relapses

I suffered a relapse last night...er, this morning. I didn't get to bed until nearly 7:30am, and got up at 2pm. It was for a good cause, though -- I worked through the night in order to meet a deadline (and make several hundred dollars).

Apparently when I went to bed I was not able to add and subtract correctly, because I set my alarms for about noon, thinking that would enough sleep. Needless to say, it wasn't.

It seems that to meet a deadline (and still be able to enjoy my weekend) I've sacrificed my hard work so far to change my sleep schedule. I'm hoping that a little over seven hours' sleep won't be enough, and I'll still be tired tonight, but we'll see.

What have you sacrificed in order to meet deadlines? Click on the post title to comment and tell me about it!