DEADLine Disasters

I finally figured out why they call it a DEADLINE, because at the end of the line I’m DEAD tired. Although I love my royalty accounting business and my songwriter clients are the absolute best, every 90 days of every year I have to work around the clock to get their quarterly statements out on time. Coincidentally, somehow every 90 days, every possible catastrophe just waits in the wings to rear its ugly head until the moment I am completely stressed out and totally snowed under a pile of ledger paper.

Just this week as D-Day approached, my copier went out. I quickly ordered a new machine but it took an entire day to get the customer support person to "support" me in agreeing the blasted new copier did not work, duh! I could have told them that hours before if they hadn't been speaking a foreign language I do not know. So back went the machine to the store and once again I ordered a (new) new copier and spent another entire day setting it up. Right now I can only whisper that it appears to be working on the chance that it will hear me and decide to pull a prank on me and break. . . all over again.

This is not the worst deadline disaster I’ve been through (she says, starting to sound like Moses.) One time I worked until midnight calculating paychecks where each payee was paid a different rate. People in the music business don’t like to do the same thing twice, that would be much too easy, way too routine. By midnight I finished all the checks, loaded them into the postage machine and then watched in horror as the postage machine chewed up every single check before I could slam punch the STOP button. I had to spend a night of déjà vu and redo the whole day's work. I made good friends with the graveyard shift cleaning crew as I spent many a night in that office trying to outsmart my own technology (and usually failing.) Don't you dare say it was "operator error"!

The mother of all messed up deadlines came one quarter when my computer crashed, taking with it thousands of data entries that had to be entered all over again (after anger management classes). As if that wasn’t enough, the heat went out and the water heater burst in my office the next day. I was cold, wet and stressed, but God knows I managed to get all the reports out on time. I regret that the plumber saw me crawl under my desk to find my computer backup.

The good news is that all these disasters are just time, money and things. No one was hurt, but my dog Chopper looked like he jumped out of his skin when I screamed like a banshee. Deadlines (and the accompanying disasters) are inevitable for me, but I can't let them steal my peace with endless worry. Matthew 6:34 says: "Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring its own worries. Today's trouble is enough for today." Well, that's the truth. One day's disaster is definitely plenty without adding to it by piling on what could happen tomorrow, like it's the phone's turn to go on the fritz. Talk about a dead LINE, hello-o-o-o-o? My friend tells me to pray because (he says) if I'm praying I'm not worrying and if I'm worrying I'm not praying. Maybe I should give it a try. At least I won't have to wait for the phone to recharge before I get Jesus on the line!