I haven't worked less than 10 hour days since Mike left. Nearly all of the hours have been for a client of Mike's. The one he said don't lose, so I'm doing my damnedest not to lose, but think I may lose anyway because the requirements for this project are a complete moving target ("Oh, can you add this? How about that? I'm sure this was a project requirement. Needs to be done today. Can you push live to this server that you've never seen before, and oh, btw, runs IIS, not Apache?").

Tonight is the final night. After this, I'm done. I'm not doing any more work for this client. I've gained even more weight. I have bedsores on the back of my legs from sitting for so long, and my knees hurt. No client is worth the loss of my health like this.

The worst part is the realization that, if I had worked this hard on one of my own projects, it would have been something to behold. I could have made something of this life.

Louis Davidson Ricketts.

Been struggling for the last few days on what the D stood for in Louis D. Ricketts.

Yay, Wikipedia!

Oh, and Google, though the answer was on the third page.

Today was supposed to be a vacation day for Kris.

Having worked ungodly hours for the last month and a half (the last three weeks where he went to work at 6:30 am and arrived home after 9 at night, usually 10), Kris was finally able to take a day off. Four in fact: the weekend, today as a floating holiday and tomorrow as a real holiday.

Didn't happen.

Someone from his work called my cell phone, Kris' not working yet, and left a message to the effect that there have been site errors, mostly memory problems, and that the head honchos were cancelling the holiday and asking everyone to return to work. I listened to the message, and, annoying, tragically, did the right thing: I called home, had Heather wake up Kris at 11 in the morning, and told him he had to go to work. I then played the voice message for him. His response was a muted, "You have to be kidding me."

At least he got 7 hours of sleep last night.

An hour later, I received another phone call from the same coworker. I answered, and he asked for Kris. I told him that Kris wasn't here, he was on his way into work.

Apparently this was the best news this guy could have ever heard. He went off on oh, how wonderful that is, and after a few minutes, started saying how sorry he was that he had to call everyone into work, there were such problems.

As he went off on his apologies, my anger started rising. My husband has been effectively working for less than minimum wages for this company, and they're calling him in on his day off, the first in six weeks. Kris has missed half the ultimate practices in the last month, hasn't spent a weekend with me for two, and I can count the number of times his hasn't been too exhausted in the last month for sex because of work on one hand.

Right, this guy is sorry. So sorry that the site that isn't making any money has to fix itself right now.

I hung up on the guy.

I have no desire to be nice to the person who is clearly not as sorry as he is claiming to be. If he were that sorry, he wouldn't have called in the first place.

Asshole.

Most of our time is spent trying to lessen the pains of life.

"Don't lose this client."

Nearly the last thing Mike said to me as he left for his two week no-contact-with-the-outside-world vacation a week ago. "Don't lose this client."

To him, this client is important. To me, that means this client gets first priority. When they say jump, I jump.

So, here I am, four thirty on a Thursday, and I'm completely exhausted. Doyle left this afternoon, and is gone until Saturday night. I have Mike's clients, my clients, and Doyle's projects. I've been working 12 hour days (making that 10 billable hours a day), and I'm still losing traction. My first thoughts last Thursday when I realized the enormity of the projects Mike left for me was, "Uh oh. I'm in trouble."

My first reaction was to complain. As the words came from my mouth, however, I realized how retarded this complaining was. It wasn't helping me finish the work. It wasn't boosting my productivy. It wasn't changing the fact that I had a huge mountain of work to do and the only way to get over the mountain was to simply start working.

So, I did. And haven't stopped. I left work not with the exciting feeling of accomplishment, but with dread: something left unfinished, something not quote done, something I'm still behind on.

As I was walking down the stairs from the office, I kept thinking things are just the same was they were when I was working for other people, nothing has changed. I'm not working on my own projects. I'm not building something that will build equity when I'm not working. I'm not building up a safety net. I'm not doing work that ultimate satisfies me and my sense of right.

It's the end of June, I barely remember my birthday, and it was only 6 days ago. If I work this hard on my own projects, how unbelievably successful would they be?

My next thought is, "One more week, survive only one more week, then I can start on my own work." But I keep having this thought. It's the same every day. But, I keep thinking that: when I have enough money, I'll do X. When I have more time, I'll do Y. "When" has to start today. It can't start when Mike gets back. It can't start in a week. It has to start now, or it never will, and I'll be 74 looking back wondering "WTF?"