I've always felt that I handle stress pretty evenly. In fact, sometimes I seem to thrive on it. There's a feeling of truly being alive when you're successfully juggling everything on your plate (if you'll permit me to mix metaphors for a moment). But I realized this week that the kind of stress I don't handle well is that associated with uncertainty. I much prefer a black-and-white world.

I've allowed myself, this week, to get excrutiatingly stressed out about my long-term assignment in New York. It still looks like it's going to happen, starting June 16th for at least three months. But as the date looms, I still haven't been able to get them to confirm the starting date, the duration and where they want me to live. I was hoping to find my own corporate appartment in New York - somewhere in Chelsea perhaps. But on Friday, I heard that our penny-pinching travel department are trying to find me a studio in Midtown. I had to tell the project manager that there was no way I was going to live in a one-room apartment in New York for over three months. So I'm ending this work week like I started it, with nothing resolved.

I added to the stress level by trying to find somebody to sublet my apartment here. If that worked out, then I'd have essentially no expenses for the three months, since rent would be covered both here and in New York, and my company would pick up my meal expenses. Three months of that would allow me to completely resolve my financial problems. It's proven easy to find people looking to sublet a 2BR furnished flat in San Francisco for the Summer. But they all want to make their decision right now. And I'm scared to commit until I know for sure I'll be in New York for three months.

I've had all kinds of offers: an old couple who style themselves the Rambling Roses, complete with website, who travel round the country staying in one place for a few months; a gay couple touring with the Phantom of the Opera; three "feisty Irish lasses" who assumed I'd be conquered by their girlish charms; and a local couple who wanted to move in while they're trying to find the perfect rental apartment (the only problem with them is that they proved curiously unwilling to state a move-out date).

Today, I have to clean my apartment for the first time in at least a decade. That's not to say there is ten years of dust on the carpets. I've had a cleaning person. In fact, I've had a cleaning person pretty much my entire working live, having always had a complete aversion to cleaning products. Okay, I'm just really, really lazy when it comes to cleaning, and since I don't want to live in a hovel, I've always found it a good bargain to pay somebody else to do it for me. Last week I decided I could no longer afford it, so I dispensed with my current cleaners, a pair of young Brazilian men. The problem is that I really have no idea how to clean. I have all the materials and fluids, but which fluid to apply to which surface, that's the question?

I've mentioned several times recently my financial difficulties. They're not too extreme in all honesty. But I do find myself with fairly substantial credit-card debt for the first time in years. It really happened so suddenly, around the time I moved last year. I hadn't realized how much my life style had become accustomed to the extra income I'd been making from my old website. When I closed down the money-making part of the site, I just kept on living the same way until without warning I found that I was coming up short at the end of each month, and that I could no longer make full payment of my credit card bill. It took a while before it fully dawned on me that I was living beyond my means. A whole lot of medical expenses didn't help either.

So I've finally been taking steps to get my house in order; I did a budget, and opened my first ever savings account. I stopped tipping at cafes and take-out restaurants. I cut my physical training sessions down to once per week. As I mentioned, I terminated my cleaning people. I started carrying loose change (which had been piling up in my kitchen drawers for years) with me everywhere so that I could use it to pay the amount over whole dollars whenever I shopped anywhere. I even started using the Safeway shopping club. Mind, I drew the line at coupon clipping. And no elaborate, expensive Summer trip this year, unlike the previous four years. I'll be lucky if I can afford a long weekend in Bognor Regis.