I love the great feeling of meeting deadlines. And I usually do. But every now and then I get cocky and think, oh sure, I can do that. And then a whole bunch of unexpected events occur.
When I began this course, I said the only deadline I had was my Net Content column. Then my e-mail stuck and suddenly it all arrived at once. And in my incoming e-mail was work. Work I had hoped for but did not anticipate getting. After the initial rush of joy wore off, came the realization that I have another deadline. That was when I began to have a panic attack. The deadline is next Monday. And every Monday after that.
I thought that I would get a jump start on my new deadline while meeting my
old deadline and while thinking about this lesson. At the same time, I got
several e-mails from people in the course
saying that they are slightly overwhelmed at the moment with a number of things,
some have new and unexpected deadlines, others have family emergencies.
Then suddenly my thoughts about deadlines coalesced. The last deadline crisis I had was in November last year. I had a massive computer project and a massive writing project. One started late and the other started early. One turned out to be more complicated than I expected and the other one, well, the editor in question turned out to expect the moon on a silver platter along with the prose.
This is ridiculous, I told myself. There is no joy in a job that keeps you up all night and makes you short tempered. And because I was short tempered I did not pay attention to my instincts which were instructing me to take the annoying editor aside and ask if she had a clue about what she was doing. I said to myself, oh you're just being a bitch. It's your problem. Don't blame the editor just because you bit off more than you can chew.
After I muddled through and finished both jobs, I re-examined the two weeks of sleepless hell and asked myself what I could do in the future to avoid this kind of situation. Well, for one thing...I could be realistic. The computer job took 50 hours. I knew it would take about that long. When it started late, and the editor called up to say that her deadline had been moved up to before Christmas rather than after New Year, I should have stopped there and said, one moment please, as I consulted my day book. And I should have said, I can't get to it this week but next week, I can make your
