Yummy. I just took a can of tuna and mixed in cream cheese and black pepper. In the same pan, I added whole wheat couscous and cooked a fantastic lunch/dinner thing.

This, of course, is not news worth sharing. But I stopped for lunch/dinner in the middle of editing a white paper. The dilemma: am I on the clock for the client while I take a 20-minute break to cook and eat?

As a freelance copywriter, I’ve decided that hourly work is the way to go. It’s tough to estimate how long a project will take unless you’ve done it for the same client at least a couple of times before. But in hourly work, what’s an acceptable break? A trip to the bathroom? A dash across the street for a coffee? A banana-and-peanut butter tortilla (my favorite afternoon snack)?

I’ve come up with some rules for when to clock out and when to keep charging. If I take a “think around the block” to combat writer’s block on a project, I stay on the clock because I’m usually thinking aloud as I walk (this, of course, makes me look nuts, but I’m not proud). A dash to the bathroom is on the clock, but I punch out for a full-fledged meal, even if it takes a very brief amount of time (I frequently eat standing up, often out of the pan). Generally a quick trip across the street for a coffee is on the clock unless I chat too much with the baristas. If I stop a second to check email, I keep charging, but if I write a blog post, I’m definitely off the clock.

I know that if I was working in someone’s office, I would charge my hourly rate even if I ran to the kitchen and talked a few minutes at the water cooler. But here at home, anything under 7 or so minutes is on the clock.

Monday is Memorial Day. Most of the country, including all of my clients, will be taking the day off. But I plan to work, perhaps finish up some billing, plow through the editing of a website I need to finish, knock out an article on the results of a survey. Maybe I’ll follow up with some leads I’ve left hanging, or try to update my own website with its woefully out of date samples and text.

As a small business owner and a single woman who lives alone, I’m not sure what I’d really do with a day off. When I was dating, I guess a day off would mean a little side trip or a fun day watching movies. When I’m here in my house by myself, I’m working, or at least I’m sitting here at the computer. I guess sometimes it means I’m sitting in the bathtub or taking a nap, but full days here of doing nothing are out of the question.

There are days I don’t work, but I don’t spend them here. On Saturdays I do my long runs with Team in Training, the fundraising arm of The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Perhaps a hundred of us have been meeting every Saturday for four months to run between 4 and 20 miles. But tomorrow we do 8 and have the final pep talk for the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon, which is June 1. After the marathon, I’ll either find another group to run with on Saturdays or I’ll go back to spending Friday and Saturday nights at the gym and working during the day. (It’s not as pathetic as it sounds, and if it is, don’t tell me.)

I also meet friends for coffee, attend a dinner on occasion, run hither and yon with Erin, congregate at the track on Thursday mornings with a dozen other people who like to torture themselves…. I’m not entirely alone all the time. But because I live and work at home by myself, I don’t think I’ll get back that relaxed weekend leisure time, when someone calls to ask, “Whatcha up to?” and I answer honestly, “Nuthin. Just hanging out.”

I’m wearing purple socks today: purple cashmere socks that a San Diego ex-boyfriend I don’t really count gave to me for my birthday a couple of years ago. They’re soft and warm, and the purple is regal and strong.

Somehow purple socks give me some kind of internal strength. I always wear purple socks on days when I need a little extra energy, a little more drive. I think I have the largest purple sock collection in the world, next to Donny Osmond, who wore them on The Donny and Marie Show. (It’s sad that I know that.)

Today I’m hosting my second educational webinar, this time on Free and Low-Cost Tools Your Organization Can’t Live Without. Since I rely on a very small number of clients who each ask me to work on quite a few projects, I worry that if I lose one, I will lose a big hunk of business. So I market my services from time to time with free webinars like this one. I usually end up getting a couple of warm leads from the audience.

Last night I slowly and methodically reviewed my material, and I keep trying to envision the webinar, hearing my voice as strong and confident, telling little jokes to keep the audience interested, sharing important tools that will help people and wearing my purple socks.

Visualizing success is vital, either with the webinar or with running. I was at track this morning, this being the last really full-on workout before the marathon June 1. The coach was starting to pump us up for the run, helping us start to visualize the race, imagine ourselves at the beginning, the halfway point, close to the end, crossing the finish line. I don’t have purple running socks, unfortunately, but in my mind my feet reached out far across the finish line, bright purple socks practically aglow.

So, today as I do my webinar to help with my marketing to grow my business, I’m going to concentrate on visualizing success, and I’m going to remember I’m wearing purple socks. Everything should go just fine.

Gulp.

1. Need to fix something? CTRL + Z is Undo, but need to unfix what you just undid? CTRL + Y is Redo.
2. Have too many windows open? Hold down the ALT key and press TAB. A small window will let you tab through your open windows and applications.
3. Headline a little too big? CTRL + [ will shrink your font a size. CTRL + ] will grow it.
4. CTRL + H will open the Find and Replace window. I use this all the time to take out the second space after the period between sentences, to change all the capitalizations of a title, etc.
5. CTRL + Enter will insert a page break in Word, and SHIFT + Enter inserts a soft line break so you can, for example, add info under a bullet without adding another bullet.
6. CTRL + N opens a new document. CTRL + O opens a document. CTRL + W closes a document.