They have regular employees doing things like Finance? They don't have a process for payroll? Oh geez... I'm a bit speechless. I can't even begin to imagine... wow. I'd be watching my paychecks like a hawk, double checking them, to make sure there were no screw-ups!!! That's... so incredibly scary. OK, I understand now why everyone is on the verge of having a breakdown.

I assume it's a private company? So, the person who started it doesn't really have any accountability? So scary. It's really, really good that you fought to be a contractor!

And yeah, that's ridiculous that they want professionals wasting time on admin stuff. That's like hiring an admin for $100k . So not smart.

We *do* actually have an admin, though there's a lot of crap we still are expected to do ourselves. Our admin is a really good point of contact for information though, especially since my manager doesn't tend to know much about what's going on.

We also have to do a weekly timesheet, despite being salaried employees. I understand why (I'm under IT, and when we work on projects for other departments, we bill them for our hours - that's part of how we get funding, apparently). But it feels crazy. Then, when my boss doesn't give me any work, all my hours go to "Admin/General" and that generates warning notices to my boss and his boss that I'm not charging enough hours I keep telling them, if they want me to charge hours, they need to put me on a project where I can... charge hours! (Even this stuff I'm doing now, as far as I know, there's no code to charge it yet, so it's not being charged to anything.)

I'm still not getting anything done. I worked for an hour or two yesterday, and then a few more hours late at night trying to catch up. I haven't gotten anything done yet today, and it's 1pm. I feel awful, and I keep trying, but I'm so... blah feeling... I'm really just struggling. I'll have something for my boss when he comes back, but it really feels like I have no way to know if it's what he had in mind, and part of me thinks - why bother killing myself trying to put together something awesome. It doesn't seem to matter.

I really do need a nice long break. I was on track for saving enough money to do that, but now therapy is eating up most of my disposable income, so I'm not putting much/anything in savings (I'm putting money in an HSA instead, and leaving it there to grow for now, hopefully that works out better.... my therapy bills are more than enough that I can cash it out if/when I need it).

Sorry, I've got a headache and am a bit dizzy/tired today, I'm probably talking in circles.

Any more leads for your company? Working for yourself sounds really awesome... Did you have to shop your own health insurance? Was it hard? I have to admit, I kind of love the idea... although trying to find clients (and get them to pay) seems really intimidating. I'd love to have the freedom to plan out my day a bit better, to work really hard for a client that I like, then take time off to do something nice for myself in the middle of the day, and to say NO to things like taking notes for people

re: my mom. I'm completely with you, it does seem reasonable to assume she wants to go sightsee with her friend. But, that's not how my mom works. I'm not sure what's wrong with her, exactly, but I have this weird feeling that she either wants me to be friends with her friends (???) or wants to show me off to her friends (???). Maybe I'm wrong, it's just so weird, considering she's incapable of actually saying anything nice about me directly to me.

OK, I'm going to run and see if I can put a few more pages of pre-brainstorming notes together for the boss. Sigh. I need to plan a nice vacation to escape from all this, soon!!!

Take care, hope you're enjoying the day!