There are days when my life needs a little zen.*

Yes, I worked Saturday. But only three or four hours. After that I indulged in a three-hour shopping orgy, during which I'm impressed to report that I spent less than $30.

And then--Sunday. My day started at 8:15 am because I was determined to keep my word and get the Bernie project done "by the first of the week" and I knew it was going to take a whole day to do. Ignoring the temptations that the best kind of Colorado summer day can offer (not too hot, no rain, a little cool breeze), I plowed through the work--analyzing, adjusting, writing, rewriting, etc.

Picture my expression when I remembered, at 3:56 that afternoon, that I had, in fact, taken Monday off to do that exact, same work.

For a while I was aggravated but then it took me five hours on Monday to actually finish (the bulk of) the work, so maybe it was a good thing after all. (I spent the other three hours of my day off lunching with Gidget and playing a new game my generous but time-sabotaging niece, Rapunzel, just loaned me.)

Today I came in prepared to deal with whatever the 'Nuts threw at me. So far, nothing but a brief power outage that did me no harm because (hooray!) I'd just saved.

On the drive in today--a tortuous winding through side roads to avoid the accident blocking all lanes of the primary commuter route in this neighborhood--I was actually feeling pretty good about the status of my various free-lance effort. (I should--for the second weekend in a row I did 12 hours or more of extra work. When I say I'm a "recovering" workaholic, I have to admit that some months I'm more recovered than others.* *)

But, self-indulgent and random whining and complaints aside, I don't think I've ever had a job where management and 'clients' spent so much time leaving me in peace to actually do the work. At least, since the last round of layoffs when management got rid of anyone and everyone in the building who actually understood what it is I do.

Basically, no one left knows from nothing. I can come in and work hard on the nuts and bolts of everyone's campaign, slog through the thankless gruntwork for hours on end and no one will notice.

I can come in with a creative idea to improve--or maybe destroy, time will tell--someone's campaign and put in eight hours on the project, ignoring the claims of the other 29 campaigns. No one will ever have a clue.

I can blog, read news sites, peruse online comics, even take in a couple of chapters of King Solomon's Mine and no one will know the difference.

My point, and I do have one, is that with this much peace to work in, there is really no excuse for me to have made a weird and major change to a poorly performing campaign last week without documenting, for my own reference, precisely what it was I was trying to accomplish. It took me an embarrassing half hour this morning before I could sort of mentally retrace my steps and figure out what my goal had been.

And now, lunch (chicken curry) and a few news headlines.

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* A word that means anything I want it to mean at the moment I use it. Get over it.

* * It's for a good cause.

I got one of those "you paid your debts and now we hate you" notices from my credit card company on Friday. Now that I've paid off 80% of my balance, they no longer want to know me and they cut my credit limit by about 40% They offered one of those brain-damaging "we don't give credit to people who don't have a lot of debt" excuses. Apparently not drowning in debt makes me a bad credit risk, never mind my history of paying four or five times the minimum each month on time or even early, along with the regular acquisition of new charges (automatic bill payments).

In some fashion that no sane person could be expected to understand, using the card regularly, paying their Shylockian interest rate without so much a hateful note, and paying them hundreds and hundreds of dollars more than the minimum each month adds up to the profile of someone not to be trusted.

A friend suggested that I transfer my balance away and close the account, but I'm passive-aggressive. I'm going to pay off the balance and then leave the account open. They'll have the expenses associated with an open account but not a dime of income. (At least, until I get bored of getting their junk mail.)