Carolyn Jack

Editor and CEO, Geniocity.com
A project of The Genius Group LLC

Creative Nerve: What It’s Really Like to Start a Business

Work hard, play … never. Among all the other things I have to work at as an entrepreneur, the most cruelly ironic one is relaxing. I think I’ve forgotten how to do it.

I desperately want to, I know I should, but the chores and worries pile up so high that I just can’t. Unless I’m completely comatose (usually by 1 a.m. after posting for the day) or getting a three-day weekend (which gives me the middle day free of residual or anticipatory anxiety), I spend what down time I have mentally sorting, scheduling, analyzing - and often dreading – tasks. 

I find I seldom think any more about what I actually want to do – just what I should be doing, and how much of it I can cram in before some other obligation intrudes. It’s a little scary to think that work has taken control of my brain, sort of like that rock-shrimp-looking thing that crawled into Mr. Chekhov’s ear in ”Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan.”

Yeah, true, I’m a hopeless Type A. I like my house clean, my desk organized, my work completed and my conscience clear. I sweat the details. And I was like that even before I started a business.

But entrepreneurship has made me a genuine workaholic and I have two diametrically opposed takes on that. The first is, I know I can’t keep this pace up forever – I need to stay rested, healthy and moderately sane as much for my business as for a decent life. Now here’s the second: I also have to admit that workaholism is what gets the entrepreneurial job done.

And done is what that job has to be. So I guess I’ll keep limiting my daily fun to nuking out spam, reloading my stapler and tearing out the little paper tabs in my day planner (confetti!). For now, stopping to smell the roses just reminds me that I need to spray them for Japanese beetles.