It's been six months since I went out on my own and started my graphic design company after having been laid off from Transcontinental (due to a major corporate restructuring) last Halloween. At the time, it was a pretty big shock, of course.
Then, only two days after I got my walking papers, my cat, Bugsy Moran, died from a urinary infection that got out of control. Pretty much simultaneously to that, there was a huge caffuffle to deal with elsewhere, which I won't go into here.
All in all, it was just a true cluster-fuck of a week.
But it ended well...really well...with a surprise birthday party, staged brilliantly by my best friends and family. Even though I was sad and scared and kind of shell-shocked before the party, I came away from that evening feeling like a movie star and knowing that I was very well loved. And that's the best feeling of all. It was a great tonic for my battered psyche.
Fast forward six months and I'm happier than I have been in many years. I'm my own boss. I don't have to set an alarm clock every night. I can come and go as I please. I don't have to go into an office full of people I may or may not like, and do work I had become extremely bored with and tired of doing. I don't have fifty deadlines a week that have to be met. I can concentrate for more than five minutes on a single task. In fact, I can concentrate for HOURS on a single task now. I can start something and finish it and look up and three or four hours have just *poof* gone by in a flash. No interruptions! It's heaven!
My productivity level has skyrocketed. My self-esteem has skyrocketed. My energy level has risen, and, best of all, my love of being a graphic designer has returned. I'm specializing in publication design and production, and I love it! I do other stuff as well, of course, but it's the publications that were and always have been my first love. I'm even doing odd stuff like database management and audio transcription for some of my clients. What the hell, eh? I'm not fussy. You got work needs doing? Give it here! If I'm able to, I'll do it.
I'm learning a lot as I go along, both about what I know and what I don't know. One of the big things I don't know is bookkeeping and stuff like that. It's all a mystery to me. My mother's been taking care of that for me, but I think she wants me to find someone else to do it, so the search is on.
I've also confirmed my not-so-deeply-held suspicion that I hate selling. So far, all of the work I've done has come, in some way or another, through my connections at Transcon. If you ever need to make a big network fast, get to know a few newspaper sales reps and publishers. They know everyone! I'm extremely grateful to my former colleagues at the business journal for all they've done (whether they realized it or not) to help me get my business going. And as for the selling thing, well, I've never gotten a single job from the admittedly feeble marketing pushes I've done. It's all come from referrals. I suspect that, for the most part, it will always be so.
This new life of mine just feels right for me. It feels natural. Before, I was trying to fit myself into a mould that other people had fashioned. It's not that I chafed at being an employee all those years. I didn't. The fact is that I am a very good follower when I have a leader I respect and admire. (And I did respect and admire my boss at the business journal...very much...I still do.) But I also have a leadership urge in me, and a very strong urge to be in control of my own destiny. That last has probably caused me to make some bad decisions, or at least hasty ones, and who knows, maybe this will turn out to be one of them and I'll wind up cashing a paycheque every two weeks again before the year is out.
But not if I can help it.
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