What do I do next?
Well, it use to be that there was always someone to tell me that. A boss, supervisor, or teacher, that was there to give me direction, to give me a goal. But now that I have been self employed for nine months that out side guiding force is no longer there. I make the rules, I make the calls, I do the work.
This feels to me the largest challenge of being my own boss, building and keeping the self efficacy that it takes to make this work. There are days and weeks where I have so much decision fatigue that all I want to do is curl up with my cat and sleep. Nothing I've done before had really prepaid me for the need to make so many calls, to build my life from moment to moment. Because there is no boss here to tell me what I need to do next.
Now my life was not controlled by my employer by any means, but it had such a big impact in what I did I think because there was that fall back. That place I could go and have some one tell me what I needed to do and I would then do it.
It seems I spent most of my life doing that, having my folks tell me what to do, teachers, bosses, etc.... tell me what to do. Even when I was a manager and I was telling people what to do, the target was always set by some one else. It was this unspoken release of some level of responsibility that, in some way, I almost liked. I think for some people this is just a way of life, I worked with an other small biz owner that felt he had no control of his own company. He felt the customers controlled his every move and blamed the customers for his lack of a personal life.
I can see where he was coming from, not in that the customers controlled his life, but in how hard it can be to make all the calls, all the moves, all the decisions, all the time. It starts getting to you. It really starts dragging you down.
With this in mind I have started to try and set some rules up for my self, no work on the weekends if I can help it. If I'm feeling down, stop and zone out. If I'm feeling overwhelmed, take a walk, split fire wood, play video games, just doing something to relax my head and not have to make decisions.
But it feels like it still just hangs there, like a cloud that moves in and out of my personal sunlight, and I was the one that put it there.
I think the way to deal with this is to re-wire my brain. To "de-program" the way I dealt with things in the past and the build a new method of dealing with. To try to take those ideas of "what do I do now, Well I go ask the boss," and turn that into "what do I want/need to work on next?"
This has not been easy, and it has hit my depression quite hard. Feeling as if I'm pushing on an unmovable wall. But I just give my self a break, and then come back to it and keep chipping away at it, and hope I get some where.
The up shot of all of this is that I feel that the self efficacy I have been building has also effected my personal life. I've become more active in Ham radio again, I've started working on the projects that I half started then set a side, or the project ideas I've had for years. I have been feeling much more able to express my self in ways that I use to not because it might have effected work.
I feel like I have been much more energy to address emotional and spiritual issues that I have pushed aside for far too many years.
The down side is that this increased self efficacy as also caused problems, as I address issues with in my self, it causes stress with in my pod. It starts challenging other people because I find my self moving more and more out side the social rules that people are use to. Or by pushing things that are hard for me, it's pushing those same things for some with in my pod. The bad thing about this is it is with or with out them being ready for it. Which leaves me in a bit of a bad spot, I don't want to push the people I care about into a mental spot they don't want to be in. I also want to keep working on my self, so that I can keep working on my self. To keep working on my self efficacy not only for my personal life, also for my biz life as well.
Life is not easy for any one with in their own context. For those of us who wish to live out on the edge of what society calls normal, it is even harder because society is trying to push us back. And so we start this dance, in and out of the edges of the "rules", depending on how beat down we feel.
I feel that my journey into self employment is more than a career move, it is moving further past the edge of the "rules". It's pushing my self to grow and change, to become more of the person I haven't met. Because I have no idea where this will, what I will learn and who I will become.
As with all big changes, it has impacts we may not see and that we may not be able to control. I don't want to hurt others, but I also feel caring for my self is my first priority. And some times those come in direct conflict, and I'm still not sure how to deal with that.
So I'll just keep going, keep chipping away, and remind my loved ones to keep the safety gear on around me in the hope they don't get hurt. And maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to make this self employment thing work out as well. At least one can hope.
No comments:
Post a Comment