“And you may find yourself in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife
And you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?”

So go the lyrics for “Once in a lifetime” by the Talking Heads.

I’ve been facing this quandry on and off for several years since I got laid off and went on funemployment (I ripped this use of the term from Phil, it just fits so well…)

I had actually been wishing for quite a time that I’d be able to start fresh in a new line of business, but with a wife and mortgage, and kid on the way at the time, that was simply not a luxury I could afford. It’s a shame when your circumstances and societal norms dictate that you continue to proceed in a shoddy work life becasue you feel you have to, and happiness be damned.

That’s when the news came. My position at work had been eliminated. To be quite honest I knew it was coming and am actually surprised it didn’t come sooner. Yes I missed work a lot at first, I’d been so work centric my whole life I didn’t know how to live another way. The biggest thing I missed about this job was my commute. I lived NEXT DOOR to the office building. Oh well.

It was funny, I think my lack of concern at the exit interview wierded them out. Were they expecting people to flip out like Jerry Maguire? They asked if I had anything on my desk that I needed right then (we had to come back for belongings later) I asked for my coat and my cup of coffee (I’d just filled it up, and it seemed such a waste to let it go un-drunk…)

Hence began the “What should I do for the rest of my life?” phase. I read Po Bronson, I read freelancing for dummies, I re-read Project Management and Marketing texts. Then a thought struck me. If I were to switch industries, I’d be making less than I did on funemployment. So I decided to ride the wave and see if I could really get a job in my field. I actually DID try as opposed to the lunchtime alcoholics that don’t show up at WorkSource. The only reason I did this was because it afforded me a lot of time to think and adjust. I’m glad I did, because I’m still in the tech industry, and very glad I didn’t leave it.

For many glorious months I took care of our daughter while looking for work. I got to spend the best parts of her growing up with her every day. Then, I went stark raving mad. Something inside me snapped (maybe it was when she refused to eat from me for 3 months…) and I almost went insane. We used a bit of savings and put her in day care for several months so I could dig in deeper and look for work. No dice, the .Bomb crater was centered around my resume.

This ended abruptly when at a normal well child visit we found out our 12 month old daughter was neutropenic. She lacked the white blood cells that fight off bacterial infections. A 2 week worldwind erupted around us as we worried that our daughter would die before 2 of Leukemia or the like. It turns out that she has a bening version of it. The “cure” is to give her a shot twice a week until it just goes away naturally from 3-30 months from when it first exhibited. Huh? This was ultra freaky and really hard to handle at first. Their first reccommendation to us was to pull her from the cesspool of germs called daycare. Wow. My unemployment had jsut ended and I was freaking out about that. We now had a sick daughter and one income.

The next 6 months were probably the best of my life. Even better than when I stayed at home with Kelsey before this happened. We went everywhere and typically walked 3-5 miles every day to new parts of the city.

Work actually picked up again at this point, I started to gradually get freelance work that I did at night. My first client had me doing cut and paste HTML templates for $10/hour. Quite humbling for the guy who used to make $90K a year before the bubble burst.

It afforded me my first and most important lessons of running your own business though, and that was worth every penny. The raport I established has led to do dozens of word of mouth clients. I’m now actually what you would call moderately busy. Although I’m working full time hours, I’m only billing part time hours to date. I spend quite a bit of time looking for more work as well as doing the work I have. It’s a tough balancing act.

That brings me to now. 31 years old with a gorgeous 20 month old daughter. My biggest complaint about life is that of late I seem to have lost myself. I don’t enjoy the daytimes I have with Kelsey as much as I used to (I still do, but something is wrong somewhere) I also find myself stressing too much about work. One big reason for this is the bountiful amount of crap we have lying around our condo. I have no real office where I can sit down, separate and focus.

I’ve also stopped allowing my creative side to peek out, which is a terrible burden on my ability to balance my life. This has luckily started to change now that I am starting to take stock photos for sale on iStockPhoto.com.

I eat for crap. Kelsey eats well, but I of late have not been eatig well at all. This needs to change for anything else to work. My head is just a total cloud of fog at times, which makes me unable to work even if I want to. The only thing I’m capable of sometmes is just plopping down for reruns of Law and Order. That sucks (not L&O, my lack of energy…

Is there a way to separate work from life? For the first time I love work, but I find myself working too much and not spending enough family time. I’ve fallen back into work centricity. I want to continue to work, I just need to find a way to block it out during the day and on weekends so I can enjoy life too. I may be able to do this easier than most, as all of my clients aer very accommodating of my time and circumstances and have no issues of my working at night. I can still field calls from them during the day, so this keeps them in the comfort zone.

Perhaps as I learn more about business I’ll learn efficienceis that help me automate tasks. I’ve actually found Outlook 2003 to be one of the best tools I’ve ever used. There are so many features in it that I use to make my work life faster. Now if I could only get the time to integrate billing and invoicing into InfoPath or Business Contact Manager, I might be able to shed my current biggest time sink. I don’t have enough clients to require a real accounting system, just one that I can track hours and pop out inovices that is better than an .xls file where I have to create a new worksheet if my tasks for a client go over the one sheet format I downloaded as a template.

Earlier today, Aileen asked if we could get out of town and camp, travel, or hike this weekend. My immediate response was “I don’t know yet, I may have to work”, but now that I sit back, write this, and read it as I go, I think my answer has changed to an unequivocal “yes, we HAVE to leave town this weekend.” I’m going to start looking for a good place to go for 4 days where we can just get away and be a family again. Maybe the ocean is calling us (or me?)? I always felt calmed and clear sitting on the rocks under the Cliff House in San Francisco just staring at the powerful Pacific. We likely won’t be getting that far away, but maybe we can sneak to Ocean Shores, WA or Manzanita, OR.

Time to go back to basics and re-learn what life is all about. If I only pay attention, my daughter can teach me that better than anyone else.