Coming back soon... me

So I was pretty active on this forum up until earlier this year. Right around the time Shawn posted his fund raiser.

I've been getting waay to involved with my offline work and it has come at a pretty hefty price - my family. I've been on the road 5 days a week working ungodly hours and building software around a revolving set of requirements.

I've been running my offline business for a decade, and it's been good to me. I've been all over the country and I've even worked extensively out of the country. I've worked on some amazing projects and I've had the opportunity to sit down with fortune 500 execs for dinner. I even got an award from congress. But the thing is - the business has always been reliant on my involvement. I don't micro-manage, but I do end up participating in every aspect of the business and working on-site with customers to no end.

Right now, my outstanding invoices are more than most people make in a year, but I haven't actually been paid since March. I earn more than 6 figures, but my clothes don't fit, I look haggard, no time to excercise, socialize, and my bank account balances are ever dwindling because I spend 6-10K+ a month on travel expenses. The financial stress leads to fights with my wife over any number of topics, but the underlying factor is always the fact that we are stressed about money. The fights mean that the two days a week I get with my kids are always tainted - disneyland and a lot of fun followed up with a wife-fight and another night on the couch.

I had a similar life situation 10 years ago before I started my business. I was working as a waiter and the job stress (believe it or not) got to be so bad that I ended up quitting mid-shift. It turned out to be one of the best decisions I ever made. I went from not having a car to driving a volkswagen, then a jaguar, then a mustang within a couple of years. That all happened because my then-girlfriend (now-wife) believed in me, I loved the work, and I was excited about every little bit of progress I made.

So, in less than a week, I'm delivering a piece of software and barring some existing contracts, some post go-live support and perhaps a short stint or two over the next year to tie us over, I'm changing my job. I'm going home and I'm going to work on my websites full time and I'm going to make it work. Although there is still a lot to learn, I feel that these forums and a few others have given me the education I need to turn playing on the internet into my full time job. It seems crazy on the one hand because my best revenue month has been around $1500, but on the other hand, I believe in myself and I know that a daily management routine and a small group of solid websites can make that figure soar.

I've been trying to do both things for a while, and it just isn't working. I end up ignoring my sites for months at a time and they suffer greatly as a result.

So cheers to me for making a decision to change my life for the better, and cheers to all the new guys around here who will get to know me a lot better over the next couple of months. And a big cheers to all the old guys around here who have shared their insights with me and made this decision a possibility.

 

Hi a/s/l? .....