I originally posted this on 8th January 2012, elsewhere:

I fear I've lost a lot of work.

It all started some time ago when someone from an Irish translation company got in touch with me asking me if I could translate 30,000 words by 12th January - an unalterable "final" deadline. I explained to him that, given my situation, I was only prepared to do a maximum of 12,000 and I think I made that clear to him during our phone conversations (he always rang me up, never the other way round). But, looking back, I think he expected me to state it to him in writing (by email) so that he would have copper-bottomed proof that I had pledged to do 12,000 words by the final deadline of 12th January. But looking back on my email correspondence with him, it seems I did write such an email but I didn't actually send it to him for some reason; it got saved in my drafts list.

I'm very angry because, given that he said that 12th January was the unalterable, final deadline, I'd have thought he would have sent me the 12,000 words' worth of work he'd have wanted me to look at ASAP (in an email saying like, "following our phone conversation in which you said were ready to do 12,000 words by 12th January..."), because when a project has a deadline you know is unchangeable you should feel under more pressure to assign it all ASAP. What makes it worse is that he sent me an introductory 500-1,000 words' worth of it to begin with and he has not responded to my emails even though I have attached within them my translations of the same.