There was once a time that I had a lot of time to think … even while I worked full-time, I had a life and a lot to do outside of work.

Unfortunately, over the years, things have changed. I don’t have much of a life beyond work lately but I’m truly hoping (and I believe it will happen) that by this summer I will be working a lot less than I have over the past few years.

I had a plan before the year started … yeah, a real plan. The plan was actually 3 big plans:

• Business Plan
• Marketing Plan
• Beyond Work Plan

Yeah, okay, so the last title wasn’t really named “Beyond Work Plan”. And no, I never wrote it out. The plan was more of a mental image.

The image was me: not working so much. Makes sense … right? I had so much work to finish up before the Summer began and now I seem to be getting stuck working more and more each day I wake up.

Why is this happening? I’m allowing it … because it’s hard for me to say no when people ask nicely and/or they’re in need of help.

Now I don’t mind helping others, not at all. But for some reason it seems that one job grows a little more than the original agreement and then it slowly turns into “more jobs” … ugghhhhh… what to do? I’m LOSING money by helping these people.

It’s time to say no.

Most people would be more than happy to have extra work but, for me, I’m actually losing a ton of money each day I let my own projects slip by. Now there’s nobody telling me that my sites have deadlines … except myself. But I DO have deadlines — it says so in my plans!

I’m not really sure why I don’t say no from the get-go … I guess because I feel bad for people because they have to go find unproven programmers or “whatever” that may cost too much in the end?

Whatever the case may be … I need to tell a few people I won’t be able to continue work after this weekend. I’m now 2 weeks behind and the testing of my time is making me a little impatient … plus, my plans are screaming at me!

On we go…

/rant