cher_carter member for 16 weeks 4 days

I'll tell ya'll a little secret. I am NOT super woman LOL,
but you knew that, right?

Yesterday, I wanted to scream it from the rooftops.
I am self-employed, and though I have four others who work for me, 1 part time, 3 full time, 80% of the work that leaves my office comes from my hands - whether its a website that needs to be updated, a blog that needs to be installed or a request for a pickle as a chef for a logo (that was a fun one!)

Now before I start, don't get me wrong - I love my job. I am a typical type A personality who, if she doesn't have her hands busy doing a project for a client, will create a project just to stay busy. My assistant says when I'm not busy I drive her crazy with "busy work". I believe it.

The problem isn't clients, or co-workers or even kids or soon-to-be-ex spouses.. its friends.

One friend in particular - Sebastian.

Sebastian lives across the big pond in Adelaide NQL Australia. He and I have been friends for nearly 10 years and he knows all too well how hard I've struggled to get my company off the ground and at least crawling towards success. Sebastian also knows that as of late, I have not had a spare moment - not from busy work, but from actual work.

So earlier this week, when Sebastian, who has avoided blogging like cats avoid water, suddenly decided he wanted a blog, I wished him luck, recommended wordpress.com to start out with and told him to be sure to read the help pages and FAQ's.

When Sebastian emailed me asking a quick question, I jotted off an answer and told him that as soon as my hands were free, I'd be glad to help however I could if he needed it, but that I was fairly sure he could do it on his own as wp is a fairly straight forward program.

10 minutes after the first email came another. And then, another, and then, another, and before I knew it I had 14 emails for "HELLLPPP MATE!" in my inbox. I didn't respond as I just didn't have time. I was in the middle of a project that is time sensitive and needed to get some research done.

After the 16 email showed up, I SKYPED him. "Sebastian, my dear.. do you know what time it is?" I asked.. "Yeah mate" he said in that oooh so drives me nuts ausie accent "Its 1:00 Am Saturday morning."

"No. Its 10 AM Friday morning, for me, and I'm very busy working. Is there an emergency with your blog?"

"no"

"Has it disappeared? Burned down?"

"uh no."

"Okay, well sweetie, I work on US time, and I really can't take time to do this right now. Is Saturday MY time okay?"

I could detect just a touch of anger in his voice and I apologized if I came off as rude, which I didn't think I did.

He did his typical "no worries mate" and disconnected.

I felt sort of bad, because he is such an old friend, but there comes a time when I have to say "No" to the friends who want free help with their blogs, or free help with a graphic, or research or a free portrait package of their kids. Freebies sometimes I don't mind - crap who am I kidding, a LOT of times I don't mind - but when I'm met with friends who cannot understand that work isn't something I do for luxury, its a must, and that just because I work from home doesn't mean I'm available for chatter, really annoys me.

Lesson learned. I'm going to have to learn to set some serious boundaries about what I will and will not do and when. I"m just soo bad at saying no.

Okay, end of rant