While the pace of on-site calls has slowed somewhat for me, it shows signs of picking up again. I actually slowed it down intentionally due to the passing of my father. But life, and work as it turns out, goes on. I’m booked up for the next three Saturdays. Sundays won’t be much of a day off for the forseeable future, either… as Sundays are reserved to heading out to my parents’ now vacant house to continue clearing it out and cleaning it up for eventual sale. The result is I really won’t have much actual “downtime” on the weekends any time soon.
This coming Saturday, 4/22, I’m heading north to meet with and do work for several clients. First, I’m meeting with a fellow who is launching his own business in the financial industry. He’s hired two employees, leased an office, and needs me to outfit all the technology for it. So this meeting will be to firm up a shopping list of various items and draw up the battle plan to when I do come in to do all the setup. Then I’m going to another client just down the street from him to install a Wireless AP that had been back-burned for several weeks. That shouldn’t take very long. Then I move on to the last client of the day, also just down the street, to give them back their repaired iBook G4.
On Saturday, 4/29, I go right back up to the same area to help a new client get three new PCs (1 desktop + 2 laptops), a Wireless router and networked HP OfficeJet setup. I’ll have to pull data from the old PCs they’re migrating off of. This will most likely be an all-day affair.
Then on Saturday, 5/6, I go back up to the North Shore to outfit that office I mentioned earlier. This may turn out to be a multi-day job, but we’ll see. I’ve already setup their domain, and for e-mail, I put them on Hosted Exchange by Intermedia.net. I’m going to setup their new PCs, broadband, printers, etc. In lieu of a dedicated server, I am going to give a Chilibox a try. I’m excited to see how this device works – it holds a lot of promise. Once I get some hands-on time with it, I’ll be sure to write up my experiences.
So there you have it – just call me a working stiff. At some point, I really do need to work harder at this work-life balance thing. It was never my intention to end up working so much at this point in my life. I do enjoy what I do (most of the time), but there comes a point when you just want to have more time to not do anything. Do you know what I mean? Part of the problem comes from the fact I’m a 1099’er. My primary income comes from IT contracting I do for a mid-sized business. Then I have all of my other customers, some of whom have been with me for 3-4 years now. And I’m still getting referral business at a steady clip. Since I can’t predict the longevity of my primary contracting work, I feel compelled to cling to my side-business. This is because, in my mind anyway, it could suddenly become my primary source of income. I still continue to look for good full time employee positions, but my time to do so is very limited. Plus I am very choosy. I don’t want a long commute, so I focus on opportunities within Chicago. I also don’t want to take something for the sake of taking it.
But something has to give. I can’t keep working 6 day work weeks (7 if you count the work I do with my parents’ house) for much longer. Although I’m not going to be coming into what I call “F.U.” money from my dad’s estate, I will be getting something that will help retire some significant debts that my wife and I have. And with those things taken care of, I need to reevaluate things. I don’t think I’ll become a beekeeper or botanist, but I need to slow the pace down. I want, heck – I need, less stress overall. I need more time to enjoy all the things Chicago has to offer. I need to focus on some of my own health issues, something I continually back-burner due to my workload. I can’t keep going on like this, it’s just so hard to step back and make those changes you know need to be made.
[tags]business,computer repair,hosted exchange,multitask,it service,busy schedule[/tags]