Deadlines Alive!

I had a devastating series of missed deadlines a few weeks ago that I thought I'd never recover from. Clients are like boyfriends in a weird way. I mean, you have a bunch of them, so maybe they're like ... uh ... maybe I'm like a whorey ... wait. I'm-a start over.

I missed a bunch of deadlines for a client I absolutely adore, and I was devastated over it. Just gutted. I hated letting them down, and worse, I feared they'd dump me, because I kind of deserved it. My writing's good, but not good enough to justify missed deadlines. I was so pissed at myself.

I had tried to shift over from Google Calendars to this thing called Cozi and for some reason I didn't get it all entered right, so I didn't get the reminders I depend on. THat was the whole point of ditching Google Calendars -- sometimes their stupid reminders get borked for no reason -- so it wasn't working for me. Honestly, I think some of this was user error, but I don't use an online shared calendar because I'm a super-genius at figuring stuff out; I use it because I'm an overwhelmed multitasker who can't hold a calendar's hand.

Anywho, now that I've upgraded my computer and my phone -- via the Genius Bar, for free, so easy, THANK YOU GENIUS BAR -- I can use iCloud and for the first time I'm using iCal for this crap. I figured out how to have it text me reminders, which was the whole reason I started using Google Calendars in the first place. Here's what I did:

Figured out the email-to-text address for my carrier
Entered that into the "email" field for the iCal alert

DONE AND DONE. Actually there were a few more steps, but that's the gist of it, and it's beautiful.

The other thing I did was, with this one client, when I submit one article, I confirm the due date of the next one. THAT has been what really helps, and I recommend it highly.