On the last day of the billable year

I feel like I should celebrate or something.  I can't figure out how though.  Now if I could drink, that would be a good way to celebrate.  But obviously that isn't an option.  Do I really have anything to celebrate anyway?  I mean, I didn't hit 2000 hours.  I guess it's just that the pressure is off.  After 4 months of trying to hit 200 hours a month every month, it's finally over.  I didn't quite make it.  But honestly, I didn't try that hard.  I tried in January and February because I knew I could do it.  I stopped trying in March and April when I realized I wasn't quite going to make it.  Shit happens, you make choices, and I went to Michigan when my grandmother first got sick and I went to Vermont at the beginning of April.  Right there are my 55 hours that I came up short.  I don't really feel one way or another about it.  I don't care that I didn't hit 2000.  I could have done it if I had really really really wanted to.  The hours were probably there, I just didn't want them.  I couldn't see myself putting in 12 hour days and 10 hours on a Saturday just to get there.  It doesn't matter that much to me.  I am kind of over caring at this point.  They can give me a bonus or not, give me a raise or not - all things dependent on hours.  Whatever.  At least I have profitability going for me.  I am always the most profitable associate in my group.  But that's not because of me, that's because I do big projects for big clients who pay the bills.

Anyway, whatever, it's over.  It's a new kind of pressure now, a different kind.  The kind of pressure where you know you need to front load your hours into the beginning of the year so that you aren't trying to cram them in at the end like I was this year.  It wasn't my fault though.  We were just slow the first 6 months of this past billable year.  Anyway, the ideal way is to be about 150 hours ahead at Christmas time.  Then you can basically coast through the holiday and straight through the end of the billable year with no stress about hours.  Plenty of extra ones to lose.

So whatever.  It's over.  Tomorrow, we start again.