When everything is hard
It’s Wednesday at 9:36pm. I’ve just finished Aikido and I’d normally be winding down for the night, but I promised myself I’d write three posts a week this month, and I’m not going to drop out so early.
Solo entrepreneurship can be hard. I didn’t really understand this when I started, in what way it would be hard. I hear plenty of entrepreneurs talking about how hard they work (and how many hours they work) to get their business off the ground. For me, it’s been the emotional issues that have been the challenge. I’ve spent far too much time either not knowing what to do or avoiding doing the thing that I know I should be doing.
This past week or two it’s been updating the services page on this blog. I know that I want to offer my web coding service exclusively to web designers (as a partnership / subcontracting arrangement) and I know that I want to focus on the jobs that involve intensive programming. Plenty of people can write quick PHP scripts for the web, but how many have a software engineering degree and experience working on larger, longer-term projects? So that’s my USP. It’s all there, and I’m sure there are people out there who could use my help, but somehow I haven’t got around to writing the page yet.
Today was hard. Really hard. I haven’t had a day like today for a long time. Some days are like this, where you just feel like crap, the whole day’s a write-off and even the genius techniques don’t make things magically better. You just have to wait it out, or get out of there and get some distance and perspective. Did I mention it was raining All Day? So much for escaping. I’m lucky though, in that I do Aikido four nights a week. It’s hard to stay focused on the stuck when you’re being thrown vigorously around the room. 
Little scheduled reset points like that help, even if they don’t come straight away.
Even after that it’s still not easy but I’m going to pick myself up and keep going because the alternative is to back down before I’m well and truly defeated. If I actually can’t do this after I’ve given it everything I’ve got, then fine. I’ll know I need to tackle an easier challenge first and build up some strength. But backing down before the test is finished? I might not be back where I started, but I wouldn’t really know. I might be neeeearly there. Don’t you want to see how it turns out?
Rohan will be posting again on Friday. Yes, he will. He’s got no way out now.
Subscribe to my feed and you’ll be the first to know when I finally go completely stark-raving mad. Oh man that’ll be fun 
4 June 2009 at 15:40
Congrats on getting your focus figured out and your services page live. Yay!
It’s surprising sometimes, how the emotional stuff can be harder than you expect. I think it’ll get easier though. Or at least different as you get more comfortable with what’s *new now* and explore *other new*. That’s been my experience FWIW.
Good luck on the journey
Tzaddi’s last blog post..Insight into right and left brain thinking
5 June 2009 at 14:38
Thanks!
Since then I’ve tidied it up a bit and I’m much happier with it. 
I agree on the “Getting easier then exploring new things” thing – that makes sense. It will be interesting to see what’s next!