Friday, September 30, 2005

61 Hours

Last night I finally figured out why I'm exhausted all the time......

I'm working five 9 to 12 hour days a week. And that doesn't even count Sunday, which is my shortest work day at 7 hours!

All this makes a whopping grand total of 61 hours, six days a week..... And that's on a good week!

(The past two weeks have NOT been good weeks.)

Then, to make things seem even worse, I did some further analysis.....
  • hourly compensation for these fun-filled 61 hours comes to about $15
  • only 25 of these hours are spent in actual money-making activities (which includes driving time)
  • the other 36 hours are spent in planning, prep, creative brainstorming, admin, practicing, writing, etc all in anticipation of doing the money-making activities

Hm.... something's got to give..... if I can figure out how to whittle down 11 hours, that would give me a 50-hour work week at $18.50 an hour.... (whoo-hoo!! THAT's better!)

There have been two major time gobblers since August. One is the UAH Music Lit class, with an average class prep time of 6 hours (with 2 classes a week, that's 12 hours!!) I'm working on strategies to get that down to 4-6 hours a week. (Keep your fingers crossed!!)

The other time gobbler has been the commissioned piece I've been writing for the Huntsville Brass Band - which is now completed!!!!!!!! (I'm just 'slightly' excited about that!)

I turned in the final version of score and parts last night. The premiere is November 3, Thursday evening, at Trinity United Methodist Church. (Either 7:00 or 7:30, not sure.)

Time spent on it? About 72.5 hours (or more, since I wasn't maticulous about my time-keeping). And if I were going to get paid for it at my current hourly rate of $15 an hour, that time spent would bring in $1087.

Which would actually be pretty cool.... IF it was a paying commission. (I really need to work on the "paying" part of that activity!)

Oh well, great experience.... learned a lot....

((.... now tell me again.... how many more of these do I need to do to get to the paying part?))

Here's to continuing the Journey.... and trying to figure out how to make more money in less time.... or for starters, how to make the SAME money in less time.... that would be good too!

-Becky

No comments: