Living the Dream

Well, my first month of being on-call is over and it went very well. As I mentioned previously, I had a minimum 20 hour per month clause in the contract and the rate was about 50% higher than normal due to being on-call. They didn’t call me that much and so it was a good idea to have the 20 hours in there! Things were pretty stable after I left and any major development is on hold so there wasn’t that much happening. I was on vacation for 2 weeks so it was nice not to have to answer too many calls. But I was prepared to do what I had to – once or twice I was swimming or lying in the sun when they called, but answering questions on the phone isn’t that taxing!

I’ve decided to only work remotely and there’s a possibility I can get some remote work in a couple months or so when the same client will start ramping up. So for the next couple months I am going to work on another business idea I recently started (online interactive guitar lessons). Not only that but I’m planning to move to the east coast where I have another house which we recenlty bought. I plan to get it set up with furniture and services and do my work from there.

The key point for you to take out of this is to know what you want and figure out a way to get there. It takes some thought to gain clarity on what it is you really want. Do you really want a large business with lots of employees and travelling around the country, or would you like to work from your country home or a tropical resort on a one-man internet business? Would you like to work with one client for months or would you like to have multiple clients for short-term jobs? Do you want/need to work full-time or would you prefer to work part-time on multiple interests? I realized that there are certain things I don’t like about the IT work, but I kept doing the same things expecting a different result (the definition of insanity). So I’m committed to living the dream. I hope you are too.