Just wait a minute…

Since I left my job to start my own business, the questions I get asked most often by friends who remained on the corporate payroll are, “Bet you’re glad you left, huh?” and “Are you having fun?” 

I think they imagine that, because I no longer have to deal with the particular frustrations and problems they’re still enduring, every moment of my new life is a party. Well, not quite. Though the answer to the first question is emphatically yes, the answer to the second depends on what day you ask me.

I think I would have called yesterday fun, even though it wasn’t all good. And that’s because it had variety.

Any regular job can get routine and boring, even in the newspaper business which - for reporters at least – enjoys a high daily novelty quotient. But the entrepreneur gig absolutely guarantees wild disparities in what you have to do and who you have to be, often on a split-second basis.

Yesterday, I produced 15 marketing letters to send to potential clients, from writing and printing them to sealing the envelopes and putting them in the mail; took part in a meeting about education as a political issue; interviewed an interesting  potential blogger for Geniocity’s roster; handled the next step in the development of a Geniocity Shop brochure; helped with preparations for a panel I’m participating in at the COSE Small Business Conference this month; contacted artists; followed up on networking connections; spent an agonized hour online trying to understand why my (third? fourth?) certificate request wasn’t going through and calling on – aieeeee! – tech support, my tech-savvy partner and, I think at one point, my Maker to guide me through this hell of acronyms, jargon and malfunctioning processes. Plus, I wrote this blog post.

Not to mention all the – because I’m having to work at home for now – domestic chores I can’t avoid doing in between, or at the same as, all the business chores.  Some days, I’m working at the computer with a business contact on one phone line and one of my kids calling me from school or practice on the other, while the doorbell’s ringing and the timer on the oven’s going off.   

That’s pretty darned varied, you have to admit. Sometimes it makes the old days in the newsroom of a major daily paper seem peaceful by comparison. But even though I’d say, oh, three-quarters of what I have to get done isn’t stuff I like to do, I can usually feel confident that whatever situation I’m facing will yield to another one before my eyes have a chance to glaze over.

Sort of like a movie. Probably one of the Marx Brothers’.