One thing I’m not so good at:  Letting go of the reigns and delegating to other people.  One thing that plays into this is money.  If I can do something myself, then I’m often reluctant to spend money on someone else doing it.  Most things I can do, so I think that it’s best that I do them myself.  And so I do.  And then I end up driving myself crazy with too many obligations and deadlines.  That happened last week and I realized I had to take a break and relax.  I’d basically been working from sun up to past sun down and should have had more to show for it.  At least I realize it.  And I’m trying really hard to get better at it.  I think it’s something that’s just going to take concerted effort and practice.  And repeatedly reminding myself that I’ve got to get better at it.

Stuff I was driving myself crazy with this past week:

• Choosing membership software – There are tons of solutions out there, each with pros and cons.  Though I haven’t settled on one, I’m a lot closer.  Getting to this point though was a pain.
• Investigating merchant accounts – Same thing here with tradeoffs and pros and cons.  I use a website for advice, but that’s nothing like trusted advice, and it’s so easy to get contradicting information.  In the end, it comes down to your own investigation which is time-consuming.
• Video technical problems – Actually, there weren’t too many problems, but hunting down the right cables, testing out the green screen, etc. etc. takes time.  I spent a long time looking for a stupid Firewire 800 cable which is surprisingly impossible to find in Shenzhen now.  I had to order one from Shanghai.
• Buying a plane ticket – Once I decided that I needed to come home for Christmas, I spent a lot of time online looking for a ticket.  At first, I wanted to use my miles, but every time I went to purchase a ticket, the Delta site would tell me that “a leg of your trip is sold out.  Please try again.”  Well, thanks for telling me which one.  I had to make at least three phone calls to customer service.  In the end, I realized that since Delta partnered with Northwest (or was the same airline) and that all my flights would be on Northwest, I’d get more accurate information on their site.  One trip to the NWA site and I found a relatively cheap ticket from Hong Kong to Hotlanta.
• WordPress mail problems – A new version of a plugin that I endorse had a weird problem of stripping HTML from mail when generating mail from the “Edit Post” page, though it worked fine from the “New Mail” page.  Numerous back-and-forth with a support group didn’t yield much.
• The Great Firewall of China blocked a client’s URL – Why?  After networking around, I found out that you have to register a site in China if you don’t want it to be blocked.  I then contracted another trusted contact to help out.  In the mean time, I had to console and explain what was going on to my clients.
• Create a test ad campaign – This is just an idea that I had after creating the first website.  As part of the negotiation (due to a misunderstanding that I was forgiving with), I got some free advertising in a Shenzhen magazine.
• The Great Firewall of China blocked one of my sites – Same thing.  At least I’d seen this before.  But, this affects my ad campaign.  I now need to think about revising the ad.
• Health Certificate – As part of my visa requirement, I had to go get a medical examination at a designated hospital.  The first time, I had someone help me.  This time, it was just me.  Got it, and all is well.
• More visa stuff – Trips to police stations, getting the runaround, visiting five places until finding the right one, dealing with officials who don’t know what the process is.  This caused numerous headaches.  At least I had someone helping during key moments otherwise it would have been much longer.
• International Bank Accounts – Learning the ins-and-outs of moving money around.  What a pain.  I’ve been working on this one for weeks, it seems.  I owe my friend in Hong Kong money for purchasing my laptop.  He’s been very nice.
• Business accounting – Related to the above item, I had to contact my accountant and ask some things that have been on my mind.
• Learning RegNow’s fulfillment and affiliate system – It’s huge, complex, and poorly documented.  I often lose patience with the documents and then just settle for an-email-per-day support while I concentrate on other things.
• Finding an appropriate WordPress theme for a new site – This is time consuming and I haven’t found anything I like.  I think the solution is to hire someone to create one.  Create the job, post it, review the dozens of bids, follow-up, establish payment rules, etc. etc.

It’s about a week after I pulled back a bit so I’m wondering what I’m forgetting.  It doesn’t matter, that’s enough.  Well, one day, my head was hurting so much that I decided I needed a head massage, or more accurately a “wash head” or “xi1 tou2″, as they say in Chinese.  The beautiful thing as that there’s a place right outside of my apartment complex, a hair salon actually, that offers this.  I’ve written other posts that talk about haircuts in China.  In these haircut places, you can get these wonderful head massages before you get your haircut.  I thought my last place was pretty good, but this one takes the cake.  Here’s what you get with a “head wash” at the place next door:

• Three washes, each one lasting ten minutes.  And you’re not sitting in some stupid chair wrenching your neck backwards like you do in the US.  You’re supine on a cushioned table with your head balanced on a small padded column above a sink.  The first two washes are with shampoo.  And, once there are enough suds, the girl washing your hair will just rub your temples, forhead, sprinkle water down your closed eyes so it runs off your cheeks (very refreshing), massage your neck and shoulders.  Fantastic.  The last wash is with some sort of cleanser with a menthol sort of feel to it.  The same techniques are used.
• Five minutes to clean your ears with Q-tips.
• Five minutes of arm massage.  This is very comfortable if done well.  A lot of it is focused on massaging your hands and fingers.
• Ten minutes of back massage – great way to round out the whole experience.

After fifty minutes of that, I always end up staggering home.  A hot shower and I’m ready to hit the sack and feel revived in the morning.

Total cost:  10RMB ,or, $1.46