Struggling today, struggling quite badly actually, mostly because I'm about a day and a half behind. Behind what? I've no idea because I haven't caught up yet. I can only guess that I need to do more research on the article I'm currently writing but I only have a week until deadline and I'd still like at least one more interview and three comments on the issue and the whole thing is going to blow up in my head.
Ebay is giving me the shits today. They have a new selling format which tends to forget that I've uploaded pictures for my items so half my items got listed without pics and then I had to go and revise them all with images. Then the selling link just had 'unavailable' for a while so that what was supposed to be an hour's exercise turned out to be 3 hours as I laboured back and forth trying to get it to be 'available'. I was supposed to have everything listed by last night but events conspired against me.
In a sinister twist, lots of ordinary things are starting to conspire against me nowadays. Take, for example, housework. My mother's sister Annie (+husband Clement), brother Tommy (-wife) and sister-in-law Alice (widowed - wife of the late Henry) have finally made a trip to Australia. For Annie and Clement, it is their first trip out of Malaysia. Uncle Tommy has been to England before and aunty Alice has her own relatives in Australia, whom she has visited before.
Anyway. Although they are staying at my aunty Karen's place, my mum nagged me about cleaning the house. Due to a busy week, I was unable to fulfil this until Saturday morning (aka the dreaded 'Domestic Saturday'). I washed my dog Chi'na and scrubbed the bathroom. And hurt my back while scrubbing the bathroom. Not sure exactly how it transpired but I now find it difficult to change levels (stand up, sit down, crouch, bend over). Conspiring with this injury is a sudden change of weather. Today it is 17C, which is about 10 degrees colder than it was last week. And you know that cold makes muscular aches and pains much worse to bear. Aargh.
On Wednesday I headed out to the University of New South Wales (UNSW) to interview a lecturer for my business article. The interview was about 45 minutes long. The total travelling time took 4 hours and 15 minutes and cost $10.80 (and 2 x trips on my TravelTen, approx $2.40) . Can someone please remind me about the use of TELEPHONES? Anyway, it was a pretty good interview and I am glad I managed to conduct one face-to-face. This freelance business can get a bit disembodied.
The rest of the week was supposed to be head down work, work, work but instead I decided to go to Stuart's place because I knew if I didn't go I wouldn't see him for two weeks and I thought it'd be better to aportion time at the front end of a commission rather than when a deadline draws near. I love going to his place. Not because his place is anything special but because whenever I'm there I feel like I'm free and that nothing else matters. Who cares about deadlines and invoices? I'm with Stuart and he doesn't care! Sadly I had to lie to my parents about where I was going. I told them I was off to a job interview in Botany and then was going to hang around the city to go to the Sydney Writers' Festival launch (the launch part was true), thus dressed appropriately and gave a convincing post mortem to my mum about how the interview went and how I didn't think I was going to get the (copywriting) job.
The SWF launch just illustrated to me how truly terrible I am at networking. Still. After a glass of champagne and the official announcement I hotfooted it out of there. My stocking had a run in it and it started to rain. I managed to get to Darrell Lea for a bag of Green Apple liquorice and then catch the train home without too much fuss.
On Friday an eBay buyer came to pick up Maria (my photocopier). A sad moment. My mum is ecstatic. It took about half an hour for my injured dad and I to get it out of the back room and wheel it round the front and it took the two blokes like, ten seconds to lift it into the back of their station wagon. Ironically, I've just joined a writers' group and the instructions are to bring photocopies of the work to be discussed. Will just have to make do with my printer (yet to be named). Procrastinated away the rest of Friday, largely because I am miles behind in correspondence and thought if I wasn't going to finish transcribing my interviews I may as well get stuck into emptying my inbox.
Did a lot of eBay stuff on Saturday, in addition to my regular reading habits and aforementioned housework. Nothing as sensible as actually listing items online, no, just descriptions and specifications for all the items. Then went to crazy Kay's place for a party. Kay used to go to the same high school as me but a couple of grades below. She lives nearby so we used to catch the bus together. The weird thing is that I don't even remember how we first 'met', though I do know that my brother used to be friends with her sister at uni. Anyway, she's friends with people in my year (Clement, Huan Quan) who were there, plus met a few of her other friends. I also know her girlfriend Jenny, who volunteered for the Sydney Festival earlier this year. Twas a pretty casual party, just eating (pizza, fondue and easter eggs), chatting and pool (or poker if you preferred). I excused myself a bit after 10pm to go home and watch the second part of 'Fingersmith'. I'm getting old and unsociable.
On Sunday I was finishing up on my eBay specs but didn't have time to put them online because I went to Anne Wilson's birthday party in Chatswood (2-5pm), which included an hour of Timezone, which took a while in terms of driving over and signing up. That stretched the time +45 mins so I didn't get home to list all my items as I'd hoped (I think Sunday afternoon is a great time to end an auction, don't you?). Basically got home and walked straight into the car to go to see the rellies. (Is anyone concerned that 'rellies' or 'relloes' just doesn't look right? Should we just give up on shortening the word 'relatives'?) Ended up watching 'Legally Blonde 2' (which is much, much worse than its okay predecessor) while the adults conversed.
Which brings me to the sad state of today. My diet has been completely crap all weekend consisting of crackers (and anything one can put on them - French Onion dip, cloudberry jam, fake Cadbury Nutella) while at home, pizza, fondue and easter eggs at Kay's, cupcakes and fairy bread at Anne's, I haven't had my finger on the pulse of the story I'm supposed to submit in a week's time and my inbox is bursting with emails from people who probably think I am dead! At least I got a bit of job hunting in this morning. I'm tempted to just write off last Thursday to today as a bad long weekend and start anew tomorrow.
Good news: body+soul accepted my charity challenge article. I will be paid. Hurrah! I think that's it.
No comments:
Post a Comment