Man did I ever have a GREAT day on Monday.
The phone was ringing and I was wheeling and dealing and stuff went out the door at the end of the day with invoices attached.
Politicians just levy taxes when they need money, but I was doing what is historically known as conducting "Business."
Those that know me in real life know that I suffered a catastrophic business blow out in the late 1990's and pretty much mentally parked my ship in the harbor for a few years and elected to do nothing all day.
That is, if you don't count fishing or sitting in a bar bending my elbow or possibly eating and/or cooking.
I was burned out and angry that nine years of hard effort had been wiped out when a couple of my customers decided to go out of business and in the process take me with them by not paying their bills.
For most of the subsequent ten years I pretty much swore out loud that there was no amount of money or circumstance that would cause me to ever again be responsible for turning off and on the lights and handling payroll and shipping and receiving for anything with my name on it.
If you've read this blog for a while, you'll remember that from time to time I did, like this guy...
...consider a number of other employment opportunities including newspaper writer (I actually had an interview), line chef in a four star restaurant (interviewed for that too), and then like Jethro the Brain Surgeon and Fry Cook opportunities which never came along for some reason.
Then slowly but surely things changed in the last year or so, and the old fires re-ignited, and through a convoluted series of events and circumstances today finds me again living life as President of a Corporation--currently with only two employees--but looking at what I believe could be a pretty interesting future here as we go into the second quarter of 2010 at the Turbo Pup Compound on the Banks of the Mighty Tennessee River.
If the damn Democrats and the "across the isle reaching" Republicans would get out of the way and stop stimulating themselves and their constituents with other people's money I believe that the business world could actually develop a good head of steam and put some people back to work in spite of their idiotic efforts in the next year.
My new little company has already "injected" over ten thousand dollars back into the economy, not to mention me and my associate spending almost 1000 hours into the development and production of new custom products and most recently in a totally new rebuild process for a component used on a bunch of multi-million dollar machines both here in the US and in Europe and Asia...something which could be our ticket to not only our survival as a company but some amazing success in the near term.
With the latest PLC panel in route to our New England client and now weekly shipments of rebuilt valves into and out of our impromptu basement "loading dock," and with finally receiving payments and having an at least break even funding situation we're poised to launch into a limited national marketing effort for our products and services.
Of course I, being a professional pirate and beach bum and blogger, still intend to keep a generous portion of my calendar open to the prospect of doing absolutely nothing all day, but when the opportunity presents itself and I feel like getting off my butt and making someone want to give me their money to do something productive, I'll certainly read the fine print and further entertain their offer.
The main thing I've learned a couple of times (which means I didn't really learn it the first time,) is that you have to have enough spare time in life to enjoy the money you're making when you time is not "spare." If you can never leave the office you tend to burn out and burn up your brain and then things get ugly...
I reference 1998 and 1999 in my life as an example.
Maturity and discipline are one thing, but being a slave driver to anyone including myself has long ago been crossed off of my To-Do list.
I'm truly blessed to still be here physically and mentally after the crap I've been through in the past 50 years, and as we go into this Easter week I can't help but want to thank my family and friends for their endurance of my weaknesses and their support in my efforts, and of course the Man upstairs and his Son Jesus Christ who gave all of us our frailties and delivered us from same.
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