I swear we are all gonna float away up here 
But, no matter I got…
I don’t have much going on this weekend. What are your plans?
My great nephew is turning one tomorrow … so there’s that
Sunday is Mother’s Day so wishing a great big wonderful day to all the Moms out there 
Other than that …
Looking like I’ll be working tomorrow. And no overtime either.
Well that’s a bummer 
Sorry PD.
It’s been a cooler and wetter than normal spring for us in Missouri. I’m going to take off this afternoon to mow the yard before we get another round of rain tomorrow. Rain on the weekends always seems a little worse than rain on a work day.
Happy Mother’s Day to the mothers of GDF.
It’s finally clear, sunny and spring-like here today. I just checked and the outside temperature is a near-perfect 70° F.
This definitely calls for a long walk for my lunch break. 
I have a beast of a project going to the printer on Sunday night, I’ve been working on it nights & weekends for 4 weeks, along with all my other regular freelance and my full time job. So I’m freaking ECSTATIC this is almost over. Clients are the freaking bomb tho.
Every time I plan to take off early, something happens. It’s 3:15, and I’m still at my desk. Not looking good to get out of here before 5:00. What good is being your own boss if you can’t even sneak out a few hours early on a Friday?
No designer is ever his or her own boss. There’s always someone we report to no matter what. For that matter, those of us who freelance have multiple bosses who never coordinate anything with each other. It’s a sad situation.
My comment was a little tongue in check. As a full-time self employed designer, a lot of others think that I have a lot of flexibility. Nut, as you said, the reality of the situation is that every one of my clients is like my boss.
If you don’t mind, I have a couple of questions about that. I do lots of freelance work that I try to balance with a day job. I’ve been doing this for years and could probably turn my freelance work into a full-time thing, but I’ve always shied away from that for several reasons that you seemingly have been able to deal with. I guess I’m wondering how.
First, the work isn’t usually steady. A one-person design business (if that’s your situation) makes it impossible to spread the work around, so busyness tends to vacillate between 100-hour weeks and sitting around with not enough to do. Planning time off becomes difficult without being willing to turn down needed work that comes in at the last minute.
Second, the stress of it all drives me nuts. Steady clients with regular work can be great, like say, a monthly magazine with a regular schedule. Most new clients and new jobs, however, come with all kinds of frustrations, challenges and attempts to satisfy people whose tastes, expectations, assumptions and personalities I really don’t know all that well and who all tend to different and, often, difficult. I get way too stressed about these things in ways that rarely bother me at my day job when I’m just one part of a larger operation.
I’m sort of hating my day job lately, and the whole going-it-alone, full-time thing has a definite appeal, but what I’ve mentioned keeps me from doing it.
So how do you manage to handle the crazy scheduling and anxiety of it all in ways that don’t drive you bonkers and spill over into your off time too much?
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