Back to the real world

In more ways than one. The past couple months have been really brutal--in fact, March and April were arguably the hardest few weeks Backyard Bookkeeper has ever had. Alex and I ended up handling almost ALL the additional workload that came in because of tax season, and for various reasons we were not able to share that workload with our other bookkeepers. (Our workload has just about doubled since January.) And as soon as we got all the eleventh hour clients taken care of by the tax deadline, we had to turn around and get all the regular monthly work done, in addition to the payroll/sales tax work that is due by the end of April, and the few clients who are on quarterly bookkeeping schedules. Part of the problem was that I had planned this week off, so I had the additional stress of trying to get everything done not by April 30th, but by April 21st. It was... quite a challenge.

In the end, it all comes done to triage: what you can reasonably manage to do, what absolutely has to be done, which client can't survive without you, which client will need things while you're gone, and so on. This part of my work is really hard for me. For some reason, I always think that there's a way to get EVERYTHING done, and I plan accordingly. This never works, and I am surprised by my failure every darn time.

So now back to the real world, with more reasonable expectations, a more reasonable distribution of labor among our staff, and a more reasonable work schedule for me. Hopefully.

We are also just back from our mini-vacation, where I imposed a social media and email ban for the duration of the week. It was great. I was actually awake during the day and asleep during the night, and I spent a lot of time outside and as little time as possible thinking about work. This is where we were all week. It was beautiful! I love mountains, and I love green, and I love it even more when I get both in the same landscape. Check out Alex's pictures on Facebook.

So here we are, back in the real world. This week we'll still be busy catching up, getting back in touch with clients, and starting a major new work project. We are also waiting to hear back from Grow America about whether we made it past Round 2 of the contest. If we do, our chances of winning will be at least 12% (4 in 33 or less)--no small feat!