Part of being a freelance Plone developer means to always(!) have a certain number of potential projects in your pipeline because most of them will not come into existence.

Of course, this can also mean that you end up with more projects than you can handle yourself at one time. Which is what happened to me a couple of weeks ago… I’ve been able to alleviate part of the work load by sharing it with some good friends and co-developers but the net result is, that if I don’t dedicate every entire day to serious Plone development until mid next week I’ll blow not one but two deadlines.

After realizing that (hey, project plans are good for something!) my first thought was “No way! Can’t be done.” But taking a closer look I realized that my main distraction from being able to get a full day’s worth of serious development done was simply my other clients calling me on the phone.

So I gave it away.

If you dial my number a friendly guy named Niels will answer it and either take care of all Macintosh related issues himself (he’s rather good at that, too!), delegate to Cryx (hosting matters) or David (Windows/Linux) or simply sends me an email so I can get back to the person.

As to not be entirely unreachable (i.e. for family and colleagues) I’ve ordered a new mobile number but until that arrives in the mail I’m completely untethered, yay!

Interestingly, the symptoms I’m experiencing are certainly similar to withdrawal. I.e. thinking “Was that my phone?” when I hear a ringing noise somewhere (and boy, does that ever spike the adrenaline…) or checking my pocket and noticing, that it’s empty (more adrenalin!). That’s like when I got rid of my TV a couple of years ago and would catch myself glancing into the corner where it used to stand and realizing, that it’s gone. Or when I gave up smoking and would still automatically reach into my pocket when, for instance, waiting for the train.

Except, that this time I’m rather enjoying the symptoms and savour the brief luxury of not having a mobile phone ;-)