A day in the life

I work at home in the voice over business, and my friends give me a healthy ration of crap about my schedule, and the difficulty of my job. It's not as easy as you think to be self-motivated, but I've managed to develop an acceptable level of self-control, and have settled into a routine.

To wit:

• 8-ish - Get up, make coffee. Thank Juan Valdez.
• 8:30 - Turn on laptop, check email, browse my news page for things to critique.
• 8:45 - Call bookie, see where I stand. Begin browsing mortgage websites for equity loans to pay bookie.
• 9:00 - Personal hygiene regimen, I won't bore you with details.
• 9:15 - Find something to wear: Robe, house-pants/t-shirt, shorts/t-shirt, boxers/sweatshirt, leather corset/fishnet stockings/stillettos/ball cap.
• 9:30 - Into the recording studio, sort through projects for the day, block out recording sessions on a grid, make another pot of coffee, turn on computers, admire my chosen wallpaper.
• 9:35 - Drink about a half-gallon of water. Go into small sound proof booth, clear throat, sing a song or two to warm up vocal cords, (generally a motown tune or some opera) drink more water. Exit booth and urinate. Back into booth.
• 9:45 - Begin reading scripts and think about how it sucks that I can't drink alcohol when I'm working because the first thing that goes is ee-nun-see-ayyy-shun.
• 10:45 - Break the whole session into separate sections for each client, upload them, consider that Judge Judy is about to come on. Grit teeth and avoid turning on TV.
• 11:30 - Porn break.*
• 2:00 - Realize it's time for COPS, yet somehow dig back into scripts. Make phone call to Dominos and tell them to "bring the usual."
• 2:10 - Back into booth, brilliantly enterpret the subtleties of "a sale on remaining 2005 Explorers, Taurus and F-150s," or "agony of water retention." Exit booth, urinate. Back into booth.
• 3:00 - Search Cingular.com for phone upgrades (I have this thing about owning the latest, greatest phone) and realize that I already have the latest, greatest phone.
• 3:01 - Search Verizon.com, Tmobile.com, Sprint.com to see if I could have a later, greater cell phone by switching services. Sigh. Nope.
• 3:02 - Consume sausage, mushroom and jalapeno pizza with reckless abandon, drink another half-gallon of water.
• 4:00 - Consult with client regarding radio station image goals for the spring Arbitron session, offer slogan and positioning-statement suggestions. Put client on hold, pee. Return to call.
• 4:30 - Perform final recording session of the day, this time with clients listening live. (no passing gas or cracking knuckles) Hawk the divinity of "12 songs in a row," tell listeners how they can "rob the bank, win the morning guy's paycheck, travel the world," etc. and know that I will soon have to exit the booth and pee.
• 5:00 - Done for the day, watch Tivo to catch up with Oprah, soaps and the television judges.
• 6:00 - Cook dinner. And by "cook" I mean decide which restaurant I will dine at tonight because I have zero kitchen moxy.
• 7:30 - Back from IHOP, settle down on the couch with a glass of tea (okay, wine) (okay, scotch) to catch any of the following: American Idol, House, Boston Legal, Daily Show, Colbert Report, Best of Naughty Amateur Home Videos, (Did I say that? I meant The 700 Club) Family Guy or the Cardinals game.
• 10:00 - Begin dozing off, thinking of the harrowing day tomorrow, with all the water-drinking, radio station contests, car sales, peeing, cell phone searching and what not.
• 10:03 - Drag my sorry ass to bed, be thankful to have the greatest job and best life I can imagine. Dream of Jessica Alba, Rebecca Romijn and that stupid recurring dream where I am ice fishing with Ernest Borgnine. Wake up in cold sweat, take antacid.
• Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Yeah, it's a hard life, but somebody's gotta do it. Don't judge.
*Satire, of course. I'm pure as the driven snow.