Getting back into business for myself is moving along at a snail's pace.
There are so many things that all too easily eat up time, but they are, none the less, things that need to get done. I am making steps here and there, but right now, I feel like I'm trodding in rice pudding. Not quite rolling rocks uphill, fortunately, but still slower than I'd like.
I know that back then, it was a lot different, mostly because it was all new, and building on the new. Now it's trying to reconstruct the old. I've never been the most patient person, so right now I'm not dealing with the timeline so well.
I have been noticing that lately, the oddest things are inspiring. At the moment, a music video someone created from their own music and a few clips from old Sagan Cosmos episodes, as well as a Hawkings snippet or two. Odd or not, I'm happy to take the inspiration where I can get it.
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Friday, September 25, 2009
Cutting the safety net again...but for better reasons.
I've been here before. I'm sure a lot of us have at some point or another.
I currently have a part time job that I took on when the economy went bust and the freelance worked dried up. Well, that's what I told myself at the time. There's more to this story, which it took me a while to realize.
I found what I thought was a flexible job at a small company whose principals and spirit very much reminded me of how I ran my company. The long story short is that although I love the company I currently work for, I'm now glad what I thought I was getting myself into wasn't. I thought it would be a fun and flexible job. There are fun moments, but the flex part of the schedule is to their benefit, not mine. For understandable reasons, but the fact remains that it's hard enough to try to rebuild a freelance business as it is, let alone do it when no matter how open you try to schedule your time, the schedule each week isn't worth the paper you wrote it out on.
The one thing that nagged me from the beginning with the job is how close certain things really were to my own company, which wasn't getting back on its feet, yet that company was doing well. The realization that time I was spending that ultimately helped them I could have done more for my own with even less time required didn't help things.
I kept finding myself asking over and over: what was it that made this company stay together when mine fell apart?
It took me a while, but I finally figured out two key differences.
Opportunity was one huge difference. When I learned more about the history of the company (which had been around for a shorter time than mine by almost half), I realized how many growth instances were spurred by complete dumb luck and the owner being in the right place at the right time. I too had my moments of opportunity, but I let one in particular slip through my fingers. And that let me to realize the other difference.
When the economy first started slumping, so did my business. But at the same time, I lost of my mentor (with whom I was collaborating on a lot of projects with), whose death coincided with the beginning of the first real signs of recession. Yes, the economy still would have hurt, but because of his death, a lot of major changes happened that would have caused a slump anyway. I moved back to the other side of the country; my first living situation was a disaster, which also affected my productivity; a lot of people we had worked with together suddenly shut their doors to me after his death; and due to all the changes, it took me bloody forever to mourn him.
If those things hadn't of happened, especially if I hadn't shut myself down and spent a lot of time moping instead of doing what worked well, and working around what didn't like I always do, things might not have been as profitable, but they would have been ok.
And when the business tanked, more big changes followed: a huge out of state move to a lower cost of living area, a complete break from the part time safety net work I was doing, and a really long time period passed before finding a place I both liked and could afford. The latter turned out to be a major influence, because I did something that made sense financially, but was a risk that turned out to be bad. I was in a shared living space which in itself was all kinds of issues (nothing overly horrific--just lots of straws on the camel's back), no small part of which was interrupted communication: internet especially, which is my lifebloood as a freelance.
So when I first got down here, I got knocked down a peg further than I planned to be. Even after almost a year, I still had people contacting me about work, yet I could not get on top of things in that situation. Hence, the safety net job happened because I didn't want things to get worse. I've already delved into that, so no need to get back to it, so moving forward, this is where I am now.
Now I am here, in the wee hours of the morning, set up in a much better housing situation, with the worst of the flood passed, realizing that I need to tell my pretty nice boss (the owner) that I just can't work for him anymore. I'm still not sure how I'm going to do it, but it's going to happen today.
The next step, of course, is cleaning up the mess. It may mean finding a better safety net part time job if worse comes to worst, but it's a step in the right direction.
Here goes something.
I currently have a part time job that I took on when the economy went bust and the freelance worked dried up. Well, that's what I told myself at the time. There's more to this story, which it took me a while to realize.
I found what I thought was a flexible job at a small company whose principals and spirit very much reminded me of how I ran my company. The long story short is that although I love the company I currently work for, I'm now glad what I thought I was getting myself into wasn't. I thought it would be a fun and flexible job. There are fun moments, but the flex part of the schedule is to their benefit, not mine. For understandable reasons, but the fact remains that it's hard enough to try to rebuild a freelance business as it is, let alone do it when no matter how open you try to schedule your time, the schedule each week isn't worth the paper you wrote it out on.
The one thing that nagged me from the beginning with the job is how close certain things really were to my own company, which wasn't getting back on its feet, yet that company was doing well. The realization that time I was spending that ultimately helped them I could have done more for my own with even less time required didn't help things.
I kept finding myself asking over and over: what was it that made this company stay together when mine fell apart?
It took me a while, but I finally figured out two key differences.
Opportunity was one huge difference. When I learned more about the history of the company (which had been around for a shorter time than mine by almost half), I realized how many growth instances were spurred by complete dumb luck and the owner being in the right place at the right time. I too had my moments of opportunity, but I let one in particular slip through my fingers. And that let me to realize the other difference.
When the economy first started slumping, so did my business. But at the same time, I lost of my mentor (with whom I was collaborating on a lot of projects with), whose death coincided with the beginning of the first real signs of recession. Yes, the economy still would have hurt, but because of his death, a lot of major changes happened that would have caused a slump anyway. I moved back to the other side of the country; my first living situation was a disaster, which also affected my productivity; a lot of people we had worked with together suddenly shut their doors to me after his death; and due to all the changes, it took me bloody forever to mourn him.
If those things hadn't of happened, especially if I hadn't shut myself down and spent a lot of time moping instead of doing what worked well, and working around what didn't like I always do, things might not have been as profitable, but they would have been ok.
And when the business tanked, more big changes followed: a huge out of state move to a lower cost of living area, a complete break from the part time safety net work I was doing, and a really long time period passed before finding a place I both liked and could afford. The latter turned out to be a major influence, because I did something that made sense financially, but was a risk that turned out to be bad. I was in a shared living space which in itself was all kinds of issues (nothing overly horrific--just lots of straws on the camel's back), no small part of which was interrupted communication: internet especially, which is my lifebloood as a freelance.
So when I first got down here, I got knocked down a peg further than I planned to be. Even after almost a year, I still had people contacting me about work, yet I could not get on top of things in that situation. Hence, the safety net job happened because I didn't want things to get worse. I've already delved into that, so no need to get back to it, so moving forward, this is where I am now.
Now I am here, in the wee hours of the morning, set up in a much better housing situation, with the worst of the flood passed, realizing that I need to tell my pretty nice boss (the owner) that I just can't work for him anymore. I'm still not sure how I'm going to do it, but it's going to happen today.
The next step, of course, is cleaning up the mess. It may mean finding a better safety net part time job if worse comes to worst, but it's a step in the right direction.
Here goes something.
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