They say the best laid plans of mice and men, well I don't actually know the end of that quote but I know what it means. I know it means that you could make a bunch of plans but wrenches can get thrown into those plans and so I have been telling myself for a couple of weeks now that since my kids were off from school today, it's Thanksgiving Eve, Wednesday the 27th, that I also wouldn't work. My wife was off, my kids were off, I was also going to be off. But due to a number of things, I wasn't feeling too well yesterday and so I wasn't as productive as I would have liked to have been, I was putting the finishing touches on my Black Friday sale. We took my oldest to see Wicked because it was the best day in the next few weeks, kind of within the release window, like the release week window that we could take her and so my work day got cut short anyway.
And so I ended up working this morning and that was fine. I actually got, if you heard that, that's our oven, we're making something for tomorrow. I actually got a lot done in the hours before my family woke up and I was pretty happy about that. But I put it out into the world that I didn't want to work today and so emails started coming in, phone calls, I got a phone call from a client, messages started coming in, lots of people knowing and understanding that the holiday was coming, wanted to get some last minute stuff in. And so I did end up working more than I would have liked.
But I'm thinking about the opportunity cost, right? Because no matter how good the systems you have in place, things do come up and you need to make decisions about that. And so I thought, well, I could ignore it and I would absolutely let that stuff hang over my head. I just know I would think about it for Thanksgiving and Friday if I wanted to properly take Friday off, which I am going to because we're getting our Christmas tree. Or I could handle it today and know that I, again, reasonably would have four uninterrupted days without working. So I know I made the right decision and I did end up taking most of the day off. We had friends over for a sort of Friendsgiving brunch and I did some work while my kids napped and had screen time and I did get to spend most of the day with my family.
And I'm glad that I did the work today for the reasons I just mentioned. I didn't want to be thinking about that stuff or have to do something on Thanksgiving. I got out of the agency life I lived because I didn't want to be supporting systems that if they went down on a holiday, I'd be on the hook for. Now, I don't really have a moral to the story, I guess, just no matter, not no matter, but you can be as reasonably flexible as possible, but there are still opportunity costs to doing these things as a solopreneur. Maybe if I had a full time assistant, you know, they could have handled that stuff for me, but that's not the kind of business I want.
So I know I'll have to do some things like that from time to time. And I also know that everybody knew Thanksgiving was coming and so they were trying to get a lot of stuff in today. So next year, lesson learned, I will just put the word out ahead of time that I won't be in the office the day before Thanksgiving and that'll probably solve a lot of things. Change expectations and you'll be good to go.
So that's it. If you are in the United States, I hope you have or had a good Thanksgiving where you got to take proper time off. If you're outside the United States, I hope things are going a little easier for you, knowing that most of the country, most of the United States is not working today. And thanks so much for listening. Till next time, we'll see you out there.