About a year ago I went to an interview with a guy in a little one-room closet office located inside a small business incubator. He was a nice Indian guy, very driven and very smart.

His business idea seemed compelling and workable. He needed a UI person to build the web interface for his idea. I would only have to work part-time and the job was flexible. I just had to show up once a week, other than that I could work from home. He was willing to pay my full hourly rate, or offer some equity and a lower hourly rate.

It sounded great. The interview was promising. I went home and well, I didn't exactly wait by the phone, but I was looking forward to getting started. But he never called.

Last week I heard from him again. He got a round of funding and everything was now in motion at full speed ahead. Of course, I was excited. It seemed like a good business idea to ME, and now apparently other people thought so too. I was looking forward to starting the project.

Then reality set in. As Dan so kindly reminded me, I already HAVE a successful business that takes up 99% of my free time, plus I have two contract web design/development clients who I work for on a regular basis (Hi Anni!) plus a young son and a husband and a dog and chickens and a garden to take care of, plus hello I'm PREGNANT and need to take a nap at least every other day. My kitchen is a mess lately. The garage desperately needs organizing. This doesn't even count the other stuff that I'd like to do, like build a mosaic fountain for the backyard.

But apparently these things are not enough for me. I need more responsibility and more challenges and more work.

No, I really don't! I'm crazy to even think about taking on something else right now! I've been pretty good at saying no to new projects, but this one triggered a "yes!" response for some reason, I think because it was something that I was kind of waiting around for in the past, under different circumstances. But in the meantime my life has filled up and started to overflow.

The guy called me this morning, he wants me to start right away. I was out with a group of mom friends at Filoli and I couldn't really talk, but I am supposed to have a phone meeting with the new VP of Marketing tomorrow, and I'll have to turn him down then, tell him I can't take the job.

Ugh. Every job I turn down, I feel like it will be the last one offered to me, and I'm so lucky to even get any opportunities at all. That's totally not true, but I have that mindset, I guess from years of struggling. Anyway, I'm glad that Dan is around to remind me not to kill myself by taking on every jobt aht comes my way. Otherwise I would definitely be tempted to do way too much, and I'd probably have an ulcer and be a screaming madwoman right now. Not fun at all.