I’m generally a very positive person, but last week’s demands just about killed my positivity. The Mac issues I mentioned turned out to be a crashed hard drive. There were definitely some things to be thankful for (that I had backups of almost everything; that the software I bought arrived fairly speedily and recovered most of what I didn’t have backed up; that I have my laptop and wasn’t dead in the water); it just added significant stress to an already-stressful week, partially due to the time required to work on the problem, partially because I’m just not as comfortable coding on my laptop, and a lot of it just the mental stress of juggling everything.

Still not quite done with the Mac joys. I have the backup on an external hard drive but still need to replace the dead one to get up and running. Don’t know when I’ll find the time to do that! Feeling overwhelmed by that and all of the other “should do” tasks that are getting trampled by urgent ones.

The title of this posts pretty much sums up my struggles (in a positive way!). I have all of these opportunities that just need a tiny little push to turn into something, and I’m having a hard time pushing.

I’ve bought ad space but not sent in my ads; I have potential clients who are asking me to do work, and haven’t found time to reply yet; I have all the content done for my main site but haven’t put the design up to make it all accessible; I have all the makings in place for several new services I haven’t found time to promote.

Ugh.

What do you do when you feel like this?

Thinking back to what’s worked before (because I think that’s my best bet), I do better when I have a concrete list of steps; I don’t do well with ambiguity. So here’s what I’ll do today, before 5:20pm when I am leaving for music practice:

• Close all tabs and reboot my computer (if you think this sounds trivial, you don’t know how I use tabs…)
• Write a list of all known outstanding projects (both client and business development) and break them down into tasks
• Schedule those tasks
• Create my ads and send to Wendy
• Send out promised review copies of ebook
• Process all emails in my inbox (only 42!)

Looking at this list, it seems kind of pathetic, but my gut tells me to stop while it’s still manageable. No doubt this short and unimpressive list will keep me hopping!

Want to jump in yourself? Just leave a comment saying what you’re going to do today, or post on your own blog and leave a link.

It didn’t respond to any of the happy “kill program” commands, so I finally hard-rebooted it and now it’s not coming back. I’m no Mac guru, but I’ve tried a whole bunch of remedies found via Google, and no luck yet. Computers are finicky beasts, though, so I’m hopeful that something will work. I’m going to call my local Apple-friendly computer store when they open and see what they suggest.

In the meantime, I’m incredibly glad I installed FolderShare last week, so most everything is backed up on my laptop (where I’m typing now) as well as my JungleDisk. If I need to work on my laptop, I can, it’s just not as nice for coding.

My big priority for this week (other than getting the misbehaving Mac working) is to finish up some outstanding projects that are really stressing me out. I have new projects lined up for next week and am going to have a nervous breakdown if I have to do them all at once, so the obvious answer is to finish up the current ones first.

One of the projects is a client’s web application and the other is the ebook.

For today…

I’m going to focus on the client project and make as much progress as I can there. I have about seven other obligations for the day, but this is going to be my core task.

For the week…

I’m going to keep working on the client project, and do the following for my ebook:

• Decide on a final name
• Get a cover and site designed (starting the process today)
• Set up sales and affiliate program
• Format the book
• Do an interview to promote the book

Want to jump in yourself? Just leave a comment saying what you’re going to do today, or post on your own blog and leave a link.