The Fine Line Between Busy and Overwhelmed

With my phlebotomy clinicals starting this week (tomorrow to be exact), I've been doing a lot of thinking on how I am going to balance everything. I already juggle being a SAHM, going to school 2 nights a week, handling the business end of my husband's business, dealing with his chronic illness and freelance writing. Now, with the addition of clinicals three days a week, I am wondering if my plate isn't getting a little crowded.

There is a fine line between busy and overwhelmed. Whether you are a stay at home parent trying to earn some extra money or a full-time employee freelancing on the side until you build your business enough to quit your day job, this line is something you will encounter at some point. How you handle it says a lot about you.

Personally, I thrive on being busy. I seem to do my best work when a deadline is bearing down on me. This weekend for the very first time, I participated in one of NAA's pushes. With the incentive of $1.75 extra per article, I wanted to knock out as many articles as possible. I ended up doing 16 articles in two days, three of which were over 500 words. Considering my husband was in the hospital (yes again), my daughter was cranky because she missed him and I was fighting a respiratory bug, I'm amazed at how much I was able to do. But it all goes back to the deadline. I knew I needed to do as much as I could during those two days of extra pay.

However, there does come a point when I get overwhelmed. When this happens, I break down and do the one thing I hate to do. I ask for help. In many cases, it doesn't take a lot to get me over the hump-a friend babysitting for a couple hours, a family member jumping in to quiz me on my notes for class or my husband telling me to take a nap rather than visit him at the hospital.

Where are you on the line between busy and overwhelmed? If you cross over to overwhelmed, how do you handle it?

*Photo by Ryan Smart.

Freelance Progress Report: September 2009

September got off to a bumpy start with first my husband, then my daughter and finally me getting sick. I ended up not working for pretty much the entire first week and have been playing catch up all month to try to get to my income goal. Unfortunately, I didn't quite make it to my goal of $400. But considering I missed a week of work, I'm not displeased at coming in just $36.93 short. I ended up with $363.07 in writing income this month.

Since Ecopywriters is supposed to be implementing a system to cut down approval time, I decided to hold onto them for now. I did get paid for one of my articles, but the last one is still pending. I spoke to the operations manager and she said it should be paid soon. They haven't had much selection so I only managed two articles this month.

There was a little snafu with my payment. For some reason, Paypal blocked the payment even though it had let one through previously. I ended up having to go in and change some settings before it could go through. Then, Paypal charged me a fee. I'm a bit perturbed about that. While I know I can write it off as a business expense, I don't understand why I got charged a fee. According to Suz, payments were made the same way. Payments from other sites were not charged fees. Paypal says the transaction was coded as a purchase

The Breakdown
2 articles-$21.40
Total to date-$56.48

I'm really loving NAA. Most of my work this month was done for two clients. I did do occasional articles for other clients to give myself a break every once in a while. After writing so many articles on the two topics, I think it would be safe to call myself an expert. I'm really excited about the newest feature on the site. It is an option for clients to tip writers. I am curious to see how this affects my income.

The Breakdown
62 articles-$336.40
Total to date-$739

I had hoped to have time to work on a little for Associated Content and Ehow this month, but it didn't quite work out. Since they both provide residual income, I would like to increase this by adding a few more articles to each every month. If you stopped by Ehow to check out my husband's article that I mentioned in the last progress report, thank you. The increase in views thrilled him and he's talking about doing more. On a good note, I think this month will be the one where I finally reach payout. I'm only $1.31 away.

Associated Content Breakdown
June PV bonus-$2.16
Total to date-$121.73

Ehow Breakdown
September PV earnings-$3.11
PV earnings to date-$8.69

I don't know if I'm just logging in at bad times or what, but Text Broker hasn't had a lot of level 4 articles for me this month. The few I have saw weren't topics I was interested in. I didn't do a single article for them this month.

I did put in a few bids on jobs this month, but lost out to people who were willing to take less money. While I don't expect professional rates, I'm not going to write a 500 word article for $1-2.

*Image by Christian Ferrari.

The Weekly Resource RoundUp

I haven't had much time to post lately. As I mentioned in a post earlier this month, my entire family, including myself, got sick. I ended up losing close to a week of writing time. It was not exactly an ideal start for the month. I've been scrambling all month to make up for the lost income so I can still reach my goal of $400 in writing income.

Anyway, on to this week's resource round up. Since many of us haven't reached the point where we make enough income to pay for things we need, I thought I would share some freebies for freelancers that I have came across on the web.

Visit Writing Career to get some free e-books that can help expand your skills. If you are looking for information on how to make money writing for gaming sites, Freelance Poker Writing will help. Creative Freelancing shows you the various careers you can pursue from home, including freelance writing, programming, graphic design and more. If you write a lot of promotional copy or are considering adding that to your repertoire, check out The Lousy Writer's Guide to Writing Persuasively.

If you do not have Microsoft Office or perhaps you have a client that doesn't, Open Office is an excellent substitution. It is an open source (FREE) software suite that gives you word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, graphic and database functionality. It is similar to Microsoft Office so there is no steep learning curve. Extensions to improve functionality are also available for free.

Nothing interferes with a freelancer's work more than their computer having problems. Avast! Antivirus Home Edition will help protect you from damage caused by viruses. Spybot S&D will search out spyware for you. If you use IE8, be sure to scroll down the page to read about a possible issue and how to fix it. Finally, Ad-Aware Free is another program that finds spyware and adware on your computer. I like to use both it and Spybot because each will catch whatever the other one misses. When downloading, make sure you have selected the free version as they also offer paid versions with more features.