It’s been officially a year today. A year of no paycheques, no health benefits, no vacation time. No nine a.m. starts, no staying indoors all day staring at a computer screen, no monstrous amounts of unpaid overtime. (Okay, I lied, all of those things have happened, and worse.) I love that I can say that I’ve been running my own business for a year and I’m still in love with it.
I’ve had the chance to work with a huge range of companies and people over the past year, producing a range of different projects. I’ve done newspaper ads, illustrations, resumes, and a whole slew of websites, logos, business cards, and brochures. I’ve learned how to use Quickbooks, I’ve streamlined my processes, I’ve learned some AJAX techniques, I’ve rewritten my CMS code base, I’ve read about grids and typography and golden ratios. I’ve lost out on contracts, and I’ve taken on projects that thrilled and challenged me. I make an awful lot less money now than I used to, and I probably work harder. But it’s just so much fun.
However, my one-year-mark is a time for serious consideration. What’s my goal here? Where am I going? How is my little business going to grow up? And, most importantly, how can I keep doing what I love, stay sane, and make enough money to keep me in chocolate and red wine for the rest of my life?
I am coming to realize that:
- Delegate, delegate, delegate. I am a creature of many talents, but I am not any of the following: Salesman. Accountant. Programmer. Mechanic. Stop thinking you can do everything, and start spending more of your time doing what you are good at and do enjoy.
- Nothing comes quickly. Projects will take longer than you expected to reach completion. A two-minute fix will turn into a two-hour session of slamming your head against the wall. Sometimes you’ll put an inordinate amount of time into researching an estimate for a project you’re not awarded, only to be handed a bigger and better project a year down the line. A lot of what I do is investment.
- It is great to be a workaholic, but make sure you get at least three seconds of fresh air every day.
- Stop taking things so personally. Not everyone can think you’re the next coming, and some days, you will just suck. This does not necessarily mean that you are a total failure in all areas of your life, and it is certainly not cause for a mental breakdown.
- Nancy Reagan was right, sort of. Sometimes, you should “just say no”. As a small-business owner, it’s easy to fall into the trap of jumping at anything that dangles a cheque in front of you, but that’s not really why you’re in this business, anyway, and it’s certainly not the most important factor to consider.
These are my monsters. I’m hoping that, by this time next year, I’ll have massacred at least half of them.
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Start your car-related-metaphor engines! I’m offering a limited-time-only small-biz “jump-start” package: everything you need to get your marketing started for your small business, at a fraction (that fraction would be something akin to ½) of the cost! It may be totally insane of me to be offering this special, given that I already/always seem to be super-busy, so it may not last long! Grab it while it’s hot, and I’m still crazy!
For more details, read all about it.
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I did the craziest thing this Secular Holiday Season: I took time off work. I drank brandy with my Granddad and went pretty-dress-shopping with my little sister. I adopted an almost-semi-regular sleeping pattern. I drove a snowmobile for the first time ever. I went to midnight mass, also for the first time ever. I curled up with good books (not for the first time ever). I even went a few consecutive days without checking my email.
It was fantastic.
The week before Christmas, of course, was utterly insane. Ever since I was little, I used to spend the month of December staying up late, gluing and building and painting, frantically trying to get everyone’s handmade presents finished on time. A few years ago, I stopped this entirely. One year, I did all of my Christmas shopping at the liquor store (various pretty bottles full of sauce for my alcy family) and grocery store (Hershey’s Kisses for everyone I love). It really did make things easier.
I’m not even entirely sure how it happened, but this year, that beautiful idea flew right out the window. I had a week, and a to-do list of other things on which I ought to have been focusing, but somehow I found myself up all night again, trying to teach myself to solder and etch glass and quill paper, all with varying degrees of success. I was stressed out to the nth degree, my hands were black and covered in cuts, I was rationing my sleep and avoiding my work—but I think that it was really good for me, too. It’s been too long since I sat down and did something with my hands, and I forget how nice it is to get away from this screen.
And I think, in the end of it all, I made pretty neat stuff. I made ornaments (relatively successful), and gingerbread (successful in terms of my baking ability, which is nil), and monogrammed glasses. I spent hours making a stylized portrait of my little-sister/best-friend (which I’ll be sure to post once I’ve finished the final details, so maybe by NEXT Christmas). But by far, the most ambitious endeavour was a set of throwing stars for my boyfriend.
The target wasn’t hard:
Although I should have put cork on the top layer, and painted that. It’s composed primarily of banker’s box lids stuffed with copies of this awful free barhopper’s magazine that I stole from around town, and it’s going to fall apart pretty quickly.
The throwing stars themselves were a little hit-and-miss. Only one is actually soldered together, and it took three nights of sanding, soldering, and cursing to get that right—and as you can see, it still came out angled wrongly and tarnished and covered in bits of extra solder. The rest are held together with various different glues, electrical tape, and wires, and though they don’t look as stunningly beautiful as I’d been hoping for, they’re all razor-sharp and they stick into things you throw them at.
I’m back into the to-do listing and manic, sleepless nights, but I still feel refreshed, and as though I’m attacking things with new vigour. Over half of my to-do list contains unbillable tasks, and I keep getting ideas for new projects and processes. Maybe it’s just because the snow is melting outside and birds are singing, but I feel like my burnout might be rekindling.
Happy New Gregorian Calendar everyone!
P.S. Hey, look! It’s a crazy Art Deco logo!
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