It felt like yesterday was conspiring against me…

After having worked all day Friday – more than twelve straight hours in front of the computer – I was ready to present some of what I’d done to two of my clients. The first one said she wouldn’t be able to bring her laptop into the shop so I made plans to see the second client at her restaurant just before it got busy for lunch. Fine. This gave me time to do a bit of shopping at the market with Nog.

While I was out First Client called back to say she was at the shop with her laptop after all, was keen to see my stuff and also to pay me (!!) but of course I couldn’t get there before closing time because I had made appointment with Second Client. So we rescheduled for Monday. Fine. Got home and grabbed my laptop for the meeting and got to the restaurant right on time. And then waited. And waited. Second Client just had to “finish up a couple of things” before she could sit down with me. An hour later it was well into the lunchtime rush and clearly Second Client wasn’t going to be able to meet with me, or pay me until next week, so I went back home feeling like I’d wasted two hours of my time and – worst of all – that my clients didn’t seem to take me seriously. Changing their minds willy nilly as if I could always just drop everything when they had some time. Whatever.

Got home to discover that the third person for that evening’s tapas tour had missed her flight, so wouldn’t be able to make it. I tried to reschedule with the other two clients – a couple – but had misplaced their hotel details. So I went to the meeting point at 8.00 to explain the situation. Turned out the couple couldn’t switch to today because they had made other plans, and they were understandably not keen on paying extra to make up the 2-person fee, so they got a bargain at the 3-person rate and we actually had a great time.

This morning I decided I would just take the solo traveller out on her own today anyhow, which felt right. Because I remembered that it’s not always about the money, and then even all of yesterday’s “wasted time” also seemed to not matter so much. That whole “time is money” thing, while important at times, can make you pretty miserable if you lose focus on what really matters. I also reckoned this wouldn’t do my karma any harm, so I emailed the solo traveller and told her today was a go and all we had to do was decide if she wanted a lunchtime or evening tapas tour, depending on when she got here from Málaga.

A reply email just arrived. Tapas tour is off because solo traveller’s bag was stolen at the hotel in Málaga this morning with her passport, cash, credit cards – everything! Her whole trip has been ruined as she now has to wait until tomorrow when the consulate opens for an emergency passport to get home again. Which also puts my previous issues about time and money into perspective and I’m glad I had already decided to do the “right thing”. I’m actually quite disappointed that I won’t be meeting Emma today and showing her around and wish there was a way I could help her out.

How do you keep your perspective when things seem to be going wrong?