Those of you who know me reasonably well (which includes everyone who reads this blog), know that I'm prone to occasional, pointless wigouts. I'm thinking of having one today. Try not to take it too seriously--in a previous life, I may have been a drama queen.

A whole slew of Gidget's campaigns need work--the idiot client revamped their website, which we knew about, but they swore that no URLS would change, which turned out to be a big, fat lie since all the URLs changed. For the last few days, I've been grabbing an hour here and there wherever I can find one, to get their ads redirected before Webstrainer notices that we're bouncing ad traffic around. I'm going to take an actual "lunch" break today, drive home, and try to get the last few reloaded.

The campaign I've been working on for Bernie is humming along like a well-oiled machine. Stats look good, search queries are relevant, ads are all performing well. (One of the best-performing has a typo, but I'm afraid to fix it because I don't want to rock the boat.) The campaign just isn't producing any actual leads for Bernie's client. My wits, they are at an end for what the problem is. I know zilch--maybe double-zilch about real estate. Webstrainer likes the ads and shows them. When people see the ads, they click on them. I've decided that my responsibility ends there.

I sat in on a call a week or so ago--I think I told you this--with another potential client for Bernie. He sent me an email yesterday saying he has yet another potential client who wants online advertising--maybe two more.

His idea, of course, is that I should quit my full-time work and focus on maximizing my free-lance work, but since his idea is also that he can grow his company to a substantial size by signing up clients and free-lancing out whatever actual work needs to be done, he would feel that way, wouldn't he?

It's not that I've gone off the idea of The Gidget Co, because I most emphatically have not, but the whole Bernie deal is a separate issue and I have to wonder just how much I want to put my future in his hands, you know?

I've barely done any work on the 'Nut campaigns this week--not for lack of interest but because I need to wait a few days to evaluate ads and the rest of the campaigns are performing well enough to sort of worry me. (I'm not well-equipped to deal with success.)

I have to get on a plane next week and then again the week after that. Flying is such a hassle any more. I'm very excited about both trips, but the actual travel part is going to be a drag.

I'm stressing. For no particular reason, but I am. Feeling pressured.

That's probably why I started writing again. I originally started when I was massively stressed--I used it as an escape from work problems and pressure I was getting from the people in my life. It worries me--just a little--that I'm back to that level of stress for the first time in 10 years, when I'm working at what is arguably the lowest-stress job I have ever had.

I tell myself that maybe I just don't have the stress tolerance levels I had twenty years ago, but that's hardly a cheerful thought.