Only kidding. Kidding myself, and everyone else, on.
Because, you see, I’ve been telling fibs. Not wee white lies, but great big porkies. Not the kind of lies that are going to get me hauled up by the polis, or land me in the dock – I’m not a politician, a tabloid editor, a banker, or the CEO of a utility company, after all. But I have mos def veered off the path of truth and factual accuracy lately.
Bear in mind that it’s only a couple of weeks since I was proclaiming loud and proud on these very pages about how I was getting off the speeding train that is my life, and stopping to smell the coffee. I was shouting from the rooftops to anyone with a moment to listen about how I was going to stamp on the anchors before I bashed into the buffers.
Ha! Who was I kidding? Turns out I am the queen of self-delusion after all.
In my defence, m’lord, I will say that the intention was, and is, sincere. I want to be as good as my word. I want to find better ways of getting the balance right between running my own small business, having a proper family life, and seeing my friends. I want to be able to find time to weed the garden, do the shopping, go to the cinema, draw breath. But if the last couple of weeks (scratch that, the last 10 months) are anything to go by, the actual implementation of intention doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny.
This is serious shit. Yes, I am still less than a year into the business of running a business, so I think I’m entitled to do a bit of plea bargaining in my own defence about lack of knowledge and learning on the job. Yes, my adventures in sole trading have exceeded my expectations and ambitions. Yes, I have thrown myself into enterprise with passion and enthusiasm. And yes, I have explored countless commercial opportunities, and networked ’til the cows come home.
But like so many before me, I hadn’t really worked out how I’d manage when the cows actually did come home, when the phone started ringing, and the email box pinging.
I really did mean to deliver the goods when I was talking the talk about getting the balance right. But the unpredictability of self-employment, not to mention the economic inability to say no in the early stages of sole trading, sure has come to bite me hard on the bahookie.
I should be grateful that the work has been coming, and coming thick and fast. And I am. I am chuffed to bloody bits that it’s all going so well, that so many different projects are in train, and on the horizon.
But when it comes to walking the walk when it comes to work/life balance, I’ve been well and truly found out. All those good and heart-felt intentions to run a small business that allowed space and time for all the other hugely important elements of this modern miss’s life, look a bit lame right now, if I’m honest.
So, it’s back to the small business drawing board for me. Again.
I’m not giving up on getting the balance right, no way Jose. But I am at least going to try and stop kidding myself on. It’s time to get real, even if the truth hurts.
