I hope this bodes well for the rest of my freelance life, but shortly after I sent out the message that I was in need of employment, several people passed opportunities they knew of on to me. I was lucky, and grateful, and said "Sure, I'm interested!" right away. I don't know if it was the excitement, the desperation, the anxiety to please or the fact that it was the holidays and that school is out and things feel less busy than usual. But after thinking about it for a while, I realized: I've promised my agent a new draft of my novel in January, and my thesis for graduate school is due in March. (Plus, I have a day job.) I was going to end up spread more thinly than ever before.

It felt lame to have to email a few people and say, "You know, thank you so much for the advice and the tip but I have some serious commitments early in this year that have recently arisen. I'm sorry for taking up your time but I think I probably can't work on this until the summer. I don't want to disservice a client by not being able to give him/her my full attention. I hope I can follow up with you in June."

The recipients of said emails might think "Whatever, flake" and never want to work with me again. Which I can live with. But I DO think it's better for them--and me--if I don't take on a project and immediately it's a huge burden. Point is, I can sleep better at night now, knowing I have more time to focus and that I--professionally I hope--dodged the bullet of having to fake it at something that would come more easily if I could really concentrate on it.

So that's it for me, folks. Happy New Year!