Recapping My Road to Freedom

It’s no secret that my goal is to escape corporate work and be my own boss. I love working for myself. I can happily give up my weekends to working for myself and I feel a great sense of accomplishment and pride when I’ve achieved my daily goals.

 

It still feels like working for myself full time is a very long way off. I’m sure it isn’t, but I’m surrounded by people in my day job who think it’s normal to be away from family for 2-3 weeks at a time. They think it’s ok to work sms’s at 11.30pm on a Saturday night. They think office staff should work at least 55 hours a week as well as all weekend if need be – for no extra pay.

 

It’s probably obvious, but I disagree with all of those things. I’m happy to do a good day’s work and go home and live the other part of my life.

 

This morning I woke up to my alarm and it was a huge shock. I only had five real hours of sleep last night. The rest of it was tossing and turning in discomfort until the discomfort turned into pain and I was finally able to wake myself up. My husband was still awake at this time so he heard me getting up and went to get me painkillers and heat packs. I have a great husband here – he was even adjusting the heat pack when I couldn’t make it stay on my back in the right place. Anothe hour or so later I was finally comfortable enough to sleep.

 

I didn’t know what to do about going to work. It ‘looks bad’ if you are sick on a Monday. This doesn’t seem to matter if you’re ‘sick’ or sick. It was only a few weeks ago that I started a new role at work – unfortunately with a new boss. One that I don’t trust. I worried that I should ignore my exhaustion and discomfort and go to work. I had a nap. 20 minutes later I thought “Oh screw that, I’ve genuinely had little sleep for a genuine reason that I can’t stop from happening. I’m taking the damn day off!”

 

I sat down at my laptop feeling happy with my decision but minority stressed about when it comes time to call in sick. In one of those reasons that make me want to bend down and kiss the feet of the Twitter gods, I saw this article:

 

http://www.barriedavenport.com/2013/01/20/are-you-trapped-by-the-golden-handcuffs/

 

It really helped me realise that I am much further along my path of leaving corporate employment that I realised. I know what I want to do. I have grand plans (and those grand plans have actions I’m taking each week too). I don’t have kids to worry about. I don’t care if my friends think I’m a loser because I give up a ‘good’ job for self employment (I wouldn’t consider those people friends anyway). If I end up desperately unhappy being self employed then I still have a lot of skills to go back to a employment (though I can’t see that happening ever).

 

It’s nice to read something that resonates with me. I don’t consider myself insecure as such, but it’s still nice to know I’m progressing. Some weeks it feels like I’ll be in a corporate job forever.

 

Going forwards, I’m going to have to schedule time in my business to consider how far I’ve come, not how far I have to go.