I turn another year older, book a house in a tiny coastal village, run myself ragged organizing myself a fun time and then suffer some sort of exhaustion meltdown before, during or after the festivities. Woohoo!

This year, the chances of a meltdown are astoundingly high. First there was the half-day half-salary shock and then the retrenchment of 60% of my colleagues. Initially I had envisioned all this extra time. Long walks on the beach, time to finish a couple of books, browsing art galleries and tiny antique stores, meeting friends for coffee or a glass of wine while those salaried employee type people were slaving away at their computers.

Not so much, hey? Being self employed means more hours working, not less. Why didn’t you guys tell me that dammit?

The Corporate Gifts job is finally starting to pay off. Which is awesome (and making the birthday bash possible). The whole architecture has splintered into many small projects, each requiring the same attention as a one large project. Not so awesome, but I’m hopeful this won’t last much longer.

Now that I have a tiny bit of breathing space, you'd think I'd be all clikketty clack at the keyboard, telling you all about how absolutely delicious my birthday weekend plans are. You'd think. But over the last few days, I have found myself with a really disappointing long chore list I've made for myself. I'm just trying to simplify - that's my goal - make life easier by reducing the amount of stuff hanging around. Only, the process? It's anything but simple.

Like Saturday. I said, Hey, I'll go through all this post I’ve been avoiding. Right. Quick. I did not think I was going to read and reread everything before making the agonizing decision of whether or not to toss it in the bin? Silly girl. A few hours and more than a few paper cuts later, I had cleared the post and lost an afternoon.

From now on, unless it comes with a huge red FINAL DEMAND stamped across it, its going straight from the post box to the bin. And that my darlings, is how I plan to start simplifying my life.