You know what would make it a whole lot easier for me to finish the Big Project that the Boss is so anxious to have in his hands? If he would stop interrupting me all day every day. That’s what.

The Big Project is labor-intensive data entry with a lot of going back and forth between spreadsheets and making numbers fit together in a very precise way. Since I only do it once a year, I have to relearn the techniques every February, and that makes February almost as stressful as January. The difference is that there’s no hard and fast deadline in February. The deadline has to be flexible, in fact, because Somebody keeps me from getting any momentum.

There’s another momentum inhibitor in the works here as well. My body doesn’t like to sit at the computer for as long as it takes to get the whole job done. In fact, when I start a session, I set the kitchen timer for 60 minutes, to remind myself that a break is sometimes needed. Usually, the timer doesn’t make it back to zero before the phone rings or the fax beeps or something else happens to break up the routine. That’s good, in that it keeps my back and shoulders from tightening up. It’s bad, because I never seem to get anything done.

However, the beneficial side effect of the connection problem I’ve been having, the one that keeps me off the Internet all dreary day long, is that I can talk myself into taking a short break, resetting the timer, and getting back to work, instead of getting lost on line for way too long at a time. That’s how, by some miracle of uninterrupted timing today, I got one whole (very difficult) spreadsheet finished. And now I’m ready to move on to the next one.

Only not today. And certainly not over the weekend. If he won’t leave me alone to let me do it on his time, that shouldn’t force me to do it on my own time.