Yeah – only 20 hours. I have to sleep sometime.

One thing about building up my freelance business is that I spend most weekends and free moments either researching or writing content for all three of my blogs. I am spending so much time writing, in work and for my freelance gigs, that I often feel like I need the Twitter #failwhale’s personal bird-supported safety net.

In addition to Life Out Loud, I develop recipes and write about food over at Kitchen Jam. I’m also diving back into writing about training and living with dogs over at Dog Trainer’s Log, Research means reading – at least ten blogs every day that deal with either food or blogs. Then I need to cram in the writing – by staying up late, waking up early, and having mini writer’s marathons each weekend where I develop the next week’s posts. Focusing on my writing, making my freelancing a priority, is a lot of fun – but there are days when I’m clearly way over capacity. Unfortunately, i can’t put up a little message in my brain to ‘try again later.’

Then there’s promoting my writing – which for now means 15 minutes to a half-every every day networking with other writers, especially those who write about food or pets. Leaving comments on blogs, interacting on Twitter – I try to spend at least 15 minutes, but can’t really afford to spend more than a half hour on that every day.

So – why push myself harder and take on another writing gig? Well – because it’s there. Because it’s intriguing. Because it’s a paying job that I can knock out in two or three hours a week.

So two weeks ago, I took a gig as the Syracuse Dog Training Examiner, freelancing and writing content for the local (Syracuse) edition of Examiner.com. I’m incorporating a couple of short training bits into announcements about upcoming dog events and local news. Not a lot of cash for the effort, but good publicity, and the column features a link to my dog blog’s calendar of local events.

I am trying to pace myself, but weekends like this one – when I sleep through the superbowl because I was up all Saturday night testing a recipe and writing – they’re the ones that make me think I need a vacation from my weekends. Can’t wait for the next three-day weekend (Presidents Day.)

No one is so happy to see a Monday holiday as a freelancer.

Have you ever worked more than one job? How did you manage to fit everything in?