A lot of my time in the past 6 months has been spent wondering whether or not I should go back to the world of normal employment and working for the man. To be honest my health has been crap for a couple of years and I'm not sure how much of it is down to the stress of being a 1 man show...quite a lot if it I guess. Then there's the money side of things, we're not poor but the biggest issue with working for yourself is the whole not knowing how much money you'll have from 1 month to the next, in some ways it inspires saving, in other ways it would be really nice to be able to blow some of that cash on completely pointless shit. It can never happen, even in the good times I always had an unwritten rule that I would never spend more than a fraction of what I made in a month. These days the fraction has got bigger but the principal is still there, never spend more than you earn, if that ever happens I'd have to seriously think about getting a job, 2 months of that and the choice is taken away from me, I get a job.
So July was a bit of a fucker then. For the first time in nearly 7 years it looked like I was stuffed. There are bad months and then there are "holly mother fucking shit how the fuck can so much stuff go wrong at the same time" types of month. This type of thing in 2009-10 would have been been met with a meh shit happens reaction. That type of month in 2013 is serious stress. For 30 days I was convinced it was going to be my first ever negative month. For the last 7 days my head has been churning weighing up the pro's and con's of going back into an office
Pro's
Regular Pay Cheque
Paid Holidays
Regular Hours
More Sociable
Con's
No More Fuck It I'm Going Out On The Boat Days
Travel
Interfering With My Gym Schedule
Having To Deal With Dickheads (Optional when working for yourself)
The Politics
No More Wearing Shorts To Work
The more I think about the con's the more I can see where I might be going wrong with this whole running a business thing! Anyhoo, July, it was shit. I was shitting it. For the last couple of weeks I've worked my ass off trying to get some things in place to save August. Then yesterday I'm reminded why I started working for myself in the first place, because once upon a time I was actually quite good at things and when you're good enough at those sort of things (cryptic enough for you?) there's usually good money to be made. The biggest problem is motivation and nothing motivates like desperation. I tested something on the back of a brain fart a week ago, yesterday it made enough to cover July and most of Augusts out-goings. I can now sit back on my lazy unmotivated ass and plan the next fishing trip. Result.
Perhaps I missed the biggest con of working in a normal office job, the never ending fucking dullness of it. I once read a book called The Little Book Of Stress and it had something like get real get stressed on the cover, maybe they had a point?
1 comment:
I live a lot of my days wistfully wishing I wasn't in shackles 'working for the man' - but I don't really have the skills to go into business for myself. My industry doesn't really have that option. In any case I think your pros are all really really good reasons to go back into the grind but at the end of it all... does any of that stuff actually matter? There was a reason why you came out of that place - will it be worth going back? If the answer is yes, then go back if not... (totally easier said than done).
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