I had to do a bit of overcoming today. I woke up sick – so sick that I went back to bed for two hours. That wasn’t going to get me through the day, though. Since I didn’t have to make any speeches (or sing any anthems), a sore throat couldn’t be allowed to defeat me. Challenges are made to be conquered.

Well, okay, maybe I didn’t build any bridges or feed the starving millions today, but I did engineer two confrontations with the Boss and came out on top both times. It’s not much, but it’s more than I could have expected when I was lying in bed suffering this morning.

The first was when he complained to me that he was having trouble finding a prime contractor who wanted our bid on a project he’s been working on for a week. I didn’t say that he should have thought of that before he put all the work into it. Then he complained that if we bid it ourselves, one of us (ahem) would have to drive through the rain to pick up a bid bond, if we could convince the bonding company to issue one based on the incomplete financial data for last year.

That’s when I gently reminded him that the very reason we don’t have complete financial statements yet is because of all the times someone (ahem) phones me with some kind of busywork or distraction that tears me away from the Big Project. “I really thought I’d be further along by now,” I told him. Chalk one up for the harried bookkeeper.

Then later in the day the Boss told me that he’d found someone to take our price, so all of the earlier gnashing of teeth was irrelevant and superfluous (although he didn’t use those precise words). He had also decided that he didn’t want to keep me from working on more important things, and he hit me with the old “let me know when you think you’re ready to get someone to help you.”

Ha! He knows I don’t want anyone to do what I’m doing. I don’t want anyone else to do payroll or pay bills or accumulate information and create spreadsheets. So I told him that it would be most helpful if he could find someone to do Everything Else, such as looking through trade papers for new projects, and dealing with government agencies, and filling out endless, tedious forms.

I think I hit home with that one. He got very quiet, as if he were actually thinking about what I’d said. Nothing might happen, but on the other hand he’s not a dummy. He knows how to keep the money coming into the business, and now I think he knows a little bit more about what I do, and how we can maximize my contribution by keeping the nits and gnats from buzzing around my face.

When I was lying in bed this morning with a raging sore throat, I didn’t want to get up at all. After getting on my feet and working through a few things, I was glad I hadn’t given in. By mid afternoon I was feeling more or less like my old self. (Whether that’s good or bad I’m not sure, but it’s definitely better than I expected.)