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Take a walk on the mild side.
February 2009 - Posts
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Do you remember all those days when you worked for someone else and you wished that you could be in charge? Somehow you knew that you could do a better job in making decisions, making more money, making the company more successful if only you had the chance. Well, nowadays in this crazy economy with so many people finding themselves out of work, those dreams of running one's own business are becoming a reality for many displaced workers. I did some searching to find out some of the pros and cons of being self-employed. It seems that there are quite a few items on each side of the argument of being in charge of your own company. In Part One I mentioned several of the pros of being self-employed. In this blog I will mention some of the cons of starting one's own company, or why it may be better to stay employed if you already have a good job.
The Cons - Unfortunately, for every pro there is a con. Sure, you can make your own hours but you may find that you have to work when your customers are available. You like your weekends free, but maybe that's the only time that your customers are available to purchase from you. You will have to "dance to the tune" of your customers - they are now your bosses. For some strange reason, customers think that they are always right - nothing could be more wrong - but you are now forced to smile and say, "Yes, ma'am", even though you know that they are in the wrong. (You will find that your ulcers are starting to act up again.)
You may not have a rented building with all the expenses of utilities, telephone, window washers, exterminators, or insurances because you decided to work from home, but now you have to put up with interruptions from the kids, pets, and neighbors. After all, this is their home, not a place of business. You will have to balance home and business in the same set of rooms; it gets very complicated. As a self-employed person you must pay more taxes to the government and fill out much more paperwork. When you become your own boss, you sometimes have to become your own accountant, window washer, exterminator, and insurance agent (if you can afford these things). All problems will come to you; there is nobody else to whom you can "pass the buck". If you fail to bring in enough money, or you can't attract enough customers, you may find that you have created a situation where you are spending more money to keep a losing proposition from going out of business. Sometimes you find that it is better to cut loose a bad situation than trying to keep it going. Then of course, you are back to being unemployed.
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Now that there is so much unemployment the possibility of starting a business seems attractive for many people. Your job might have gone away, but your bills have not; without an income, living from month to month will become unbearable. It has long been attempted in this society, that if there are no jobs available, to create one's own employment by trying out something that was of interest and dreams during those long, boring days when one was otherwise employed. I was thinking, therefore, that there must be pros and cons to being self-employed. Since most things in life are rarely all good, or all bad, I thought that being self-employed probably has good and bad elements too. Here's what I found:
The Pros - You can make your own hours. Who says that every job has to have forty hours of work per week? Next, you can alter the days of the week that you work to whatever makes sense to you. Maybe you want to work only on weekends, or nights, so you can enjoy Monday through Friday during the daylight hours; it would be like being on vacation all the time. You can regulate your own pay, choose your own benefits package, or take a day off anytime you want. For most jobs you can work from home - which means that you save money on renting a place of business. There would no commuting, no rush hours, no wear and tear on your car. You can make your own decisions on everything from the color of the office walls to choosing with whom you want to do business to how many donuts to have with your coffee in the morning. You can't get fired; you can give yourself a raise. You can dress any way that you want, goodbye dress codes. It sounds great! End of part one...
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My wedding anniversary fell on a Thursday this week. I took the day off from work. I like taking a day off in the middle of the week. It makes the week feel like it has two Fridays, and for some reason, it does not feel like it has two Mondays. Most people, I imagine, would not think that the day I spent was wildly exciting, but I enjoyed it immensely. The first thing we did after breakfast was take a nap. There is no better feeling than heading back to bed instead of going to work. After that, we took our dogs for a walk. It was an absolutely beautiful day -- the sun was shining brightly and the temperature was close to 70. This was very welcome after all of the cold weather we had been having. We walked down by the river and came across a very entertaining couple from Sarasota. We chatted with them for about 45 minutes. After taking the dogs back home, we headed into town and had lunch at Chez Pierre, the restaurant at which we were married 4 years before. After lunch, we did a little shopping and bought a mattress for the main cabin in the boat my husband is building. Of course we had to test it out, so we took another nap that afternoon. Our lunch had been so filling that we weren't really hungry for a dinner so we snacked on Girl Scout Cookies and watched movies until it was time to go to sleep. It was a most satisfying day.
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I had a very interesting time this past Sunday. My husband volunteered to sing and play for a candidate who is running for a spot on the Board of City Commissioners. What made this so interesting is that the candidate is a local businessman who is trying to survive these bad economic times. He is a fisherman. He catches only Mullet and he sells them to restaurants and local customers in his establishment known as Lighthouse Seafood. You can imagine what a fish market is like with its aromas and fish parts all around. Well, we were invited there for a free fish fry. This was part of his campaign to make people aware of his ideas to do something constructive for the town - and to get as many votes as possible, no doubt. We arrived at the appointed time and it had just started to rain lightly. There was no place for my husband to set up his equipment outside; the rain would have ruined the electronic amplifiers. He asked if he could set up inside the building but there was not enough room to do so. There was nothing else we could do so we opted to just join in the eating. I had not tasted Mullet before so I didn't know what to expect. I was pleasantly surprised to find it tasty, albeit bony. Once past the bones I found that I enjoyed it. The meal was rounded out with Cole slaw, hush puppies, baked beans, and tea.
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I ran across an interesting article the other day about psychotherapists using family photos to help their clients. I forget who did the article offhand, but a brilliant psychotherapist, who is also a famous photographer, wrote it. He wrote about how he has clients bring in family snapshots to the therapy session to discuss how the pictures affect the person. It seems that the client's reaction and feelings toward the individual photographs reveals a lot about the client.
The pictures evoke different feelings in the client and the doctor can easily pick up the reactions. Then, with judicious interviewing procedures, the therapist gains insight into the person's psyche that may not be possible through talking.
Many times there are forensic uses for this type of therapy. The police, working with the psychologist, may be able to solve a crime by showing pictures to a suspect and then recording his or her reactions. Evidently, the suspect's reactions to what they see in the picture are even more important than the subject matter. On many occasions the photographic method is more revealing and more accurate than a lie detector test. Maybe someone can fool the lie detector but a person's real feelings are almost impossible to hide from the trained eye of the psychologist.
The article also said that it is fun to look at family pictures to see if you can tell what a person in the picture is thinking. You can look at the person's face and the activity and you can pretty well tell what is going on inside. It is just like when you are talking to someone; their words may say one thing, but their expression may tell you something else.
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I wrote a song about the web programming software Dreamweaver from Adobe Creative Suite 4. It is sung to the tune of Bobby Darin's "Dream Lover".
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Anyone who works at a desk all day understands that a worker has many tools that need to be handy for instant use. You know, things like a stapler, pens and pencils, paper, keyboard, and a mouse. When I sit down at my desk in the morning I expect to find everything just where I left it the night before. I like my things in a certain order and in certain places; I think most people do. It occurred to me the other day that I was quite compulsive about these things. I mean I'm ree-e-ally upset when someone has moved the things in my office.
As I looked back on my feelings about the subject I discovered many other areas where I am compulsive. I'm starting to worry about becoming obsessive/compulsive. When I go to the supermarket for groceries, for instance, I find that I always buy things in even numbers; never a single item, it has to be two, or four, etc. I'm always glad to find a two-for-one sale so I can feel good about buying two of the item.
I have heard that obsessive/compulsive disorder is very common in our society. It causes all kinds of problems in the people and makes them uptight and irritable. Physical symptoms include upset in the stomach and lower tract and headaches. Mood shifts are possible at any time. It is amazing that a person can be so uptight that just having their desk in disarray can cause them to develop physical discomfort.
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