Other people’s deadlines. Pants report.

I was talking to a good friend of mine today who is a personal coach. I don’t employ her officially but I know when we get talking about career, I do trust her opinions. We talked about my difficulty in focusing, and she asked me if I had a time in the past when I focused well, and what made that happen. That was easy.

Other people’s deadlines.

It’s not just the promise of paying work, it’s someone else counting on me. For example, I have a sponsor for ISBW now, but it’s still tough to get on a regular schedule (apologies to Laura Mixon and Matt Selznick, whose interviews were fallow for too long because of outside circumstances). But when an outside client needs a column done, or other work, I bust my butt to make it happen. I don’t know what to do to make a personal deadline with the immediacy of someone else’s. I wish I did.

In other news, out of four days this week, I have achieved pants three days. Monday was a big failure as my daughter was unexpectedly home sick again with a 102 fever, so I was taking care of her. Otherwise I have gotten dressed and ready to work every other day. Too bad every other day except for today had the additional wrenches of power outages and Internet outages. Sigh.

Speaking of pants, one of my listeners told me that interestingly enough, tomorrow is Freelancers Put on Your Pants Day! Funny timing, but remember. Pants tomorrow, even if you didn’t get pants on all week!

Writing prompt for July 9: Someone forgets a birthday.