My how time flys when you own your own business! Hours become days become weeks become months and before you realize it years have passed. Perhaps this just happens as you get older, regardless of what you do for a career, but if you work 80 to a hundred hours a week, burnout is your destiny!
For those of you who think owning your own business would be fun, well, sometimes it is. It is easy to become obsessive with a new business as you watch it develop and grow. I used to think I would be “in control” and decide when and what I wanted to work on, and that it would provide me many opportunities for free time! Well, years have pasted now and I have finally discovered I have not had free time at all, and often times (depending on the type of business) you are still working for your clients (i.e. working for someone else). Think hard about the decisions you make in life, as even seemingly insignificant decisions may one day make a dramatic difference in your life.
Wow; do I feel the same way! You and DVLS helped me set my rental business up in 2004, which has taken off and been more successful than I imagined when I first called to have you video a spec house we built in 2003. Considering how badly many of my Hilton Head friends are faring in this tough economy, I don’t want to be ungrateful for the business I have been able to build. However, as you said, when you work for yourself, you are never really off. All the “free time” seems to be taken up with me obsessing over the things in my never ending “to do” pile. Our government makes it soooo difficult for the small business owner to run a succesful business that I find myself wondering if I should have just settled for less $$ and taken a job working for someone else. At least then when I get off work, I am truly off. No one can imagine the stressors of working for yourself, until one does it! To those who know me, it seems like I live such a priveledged life, sitting in my home office, working on the computer in my pajamas. Well, let me just say this; “you never really know what it is like, until you’ve worn my pajamas and walked in my slippers”! Hope you are doing well – Dawn