I stay cheerful and upbeat and happy. I am glass half full. I stay motivated.

Usually.

Today I want to scream.

In the last 30 days I've lost 5 lbs. Yes. Five. Six weeks post op and I'm down 25 lbs but seriously. Five lbs in a month.

I want to start walking but I've wrenched my back and can barely sit up.

Yesterday, my ex-husband, and the father of my oldest son fell down and broke his neck poor guy. His wife found him wandering around the house bleeding all over the place so at least no paralysis. He seems to be okay but dang! My son is there today.

My clients are all looking at budget cuts but none have told me what it will mean for the rest of the year and the suspense is killing me. Especially since they've asked for additional deliverables. Clients, please call me and put me out if my miserable suspense!

I have worked 3 days in a row that were 18+-hour days and I'm tired. I was supposed to take today off to make up for working Labor Day but I have deliverables due today.

My back hurts.

My gummy Vitamins from amazon arrived in one big melted lump.

I am having trouble getting my liquids in even though I feel like all I do is either eat, wait to drink after eating, or drink.

Worked 20 hour day yesterday getting to and from a pitch that we spent a lot of time and money for--only to find out client has no clue what they really want.

My younger son is away this weekend and I will miss him.

Client decided to have an internal team deliver a piece of work promised to us.

My colleague read my horoscope yesterday and told me I was going to have an 8-rated day (out of ten) and that's when everything I listed above happened. I want her money back for the sh/tty newspaper that told us that.

And YES I started my period right before the pitch meeting. WHY DO YOU ASK???!!!

Sigh. I'm being a whiny butt I know. And yes it's probably a TOM thing. But daaaangg!!! Can I get a do-over??

Thanks for listening to me rant.

Gamergirl -

First off, you're one of my favorite posters. The rest of my faves will have to live in suspense....as I will not reveal their identities (until I start drinking again..maybe?)

This posting really shines a light on the pressures of rainmaking and how frustrating it can be for those people who need to hunt work, get in the door, work on the presentation, present, and then WAIT to hear if they made the cut. If you do get the work, there is the endless back and forth of client service based upon the whims of clients who lack strategic vision. A huge task in itself.

When I had a stall in rainmaking, I would take an hour or two and step back to look at my business plan overall. I would analyze where my best money was coming in and that included an analysis of how much time/energy/money it took to generate that income. I know at one time, very similar to what you were experiencing, I actually dropped 5 % of my client because they were just not meeting my expectations financially - they were inefficient sources of income.

After the analysis, I determined which clients I would like to attract and which of my current clients I wanted to get more business from to INCREASE my income. Why bother doing the analysis if I wasn't going to improve?!

Stalls and uncertainty in business lead to improvements in efficiency and effectiveness. Find out what the other company did to get the work. My guess is..they had a contact. I lost out more work to connections than any other reason. I networked like crazy but there are just some contacts you can never make. If I lost the work for another reason, then I worked on improving that aspect of my business.

OK...off the soapbox... What you are doing is tough work. I relate to the pains of being on the client service side of business. Keep at it. Stay tough.

And just like the stall in your weight loss lifted, working on your business plan will result in more business coming in.... Better business I hope.

tc

I loved reading your post. I read bits of it out to my husband. One of the strange and unexpected benefits of this forum for me, has been the support and stories about things that don't even really concern surgery, but just life challenges. Pretty much everything I'm going through, someone else on here can relate to and share their own experiences about, and that is a pretty powerful experience.

I used to be on a dating site's side forum that met the same need for me, but once I met my husband, I stopped going there. I still have many virtual friends, but we're not on the forum anymore.

I was struck by what you said re similarities in weight loss stalls, and rainmaking stalls. You get through both the same way don't you? Ensure you scrutinize what you're doing, tighten up areas, you're screwing up in, keep the faith, and keep at it. In life as in business, what other way is there to win?

Thank you for that insight. ((hugs))