Trying to pick up the pieces after you've been shit on and consequently lost all your confidence isn't an easy thing.
In fact, the easiest thing is to wallow in your own self pity and let everything fall down around you. Bills don't get paid, the phone doesn't get answered, the door doesn't get opened, your friends get neglected or ignored and you spend most of the day wishing it was time to go to bed. Of course when it is time to hit the sack, then you lie there with so many unfathomables spinning around in your head that getting to sleep becomes as easy as picking the winning lottery numbers.
Depression is such a wonderful thing, huh.
Each day over the last week, I've made a list in the morning of what I want to achieve. A simple method in itself, that lends it's kind to a supposed proven method of actually getting things done and hopefully pulling you out of this deep, dark hole. I've not pushed myself with the list thing, hence my morning lists have only comprised of 5 things to break myself in. It's completely do-able to strike off everything on said list, probably in less than a couple of hours. That said, most days I've crossed one or two things off and carried the rest over to the nest morning.
It's a long, slow process.
I've convinced myself that everything I've been doing to get work is in the preparation stage. I'm in the middle of designing leaflets to be printed out and door dropped to advertise my services. I've also signed up with a National Company that subs out work for emergency plumbing and hopefully that side of things should go live sometime over the next few days, fingers crossed. Money has been spent on getting a few more tools that I didn't get in the first place because I was using my 'so called friends' tools and therefore didn't really have a need to buy them myself. More money has been spent on a Sat Nav system, so I can actually find my way about without having to rely on Streetmap or the RAC route finder systems, which I've found to be crap. Unfortunately, I'm still without a van, so I'm gonna have to work out of my car for the time being. Which is shit, but I don't see any other way around it at the moment.
Somehow....somehow, I'm just about managing to live with what money I have left in my account and on my credit cards. Everyday that goes by, my debt is increasing and I'm hoping that all this preparation is gonna pay off and sometime soon I'm actually gonna be earning some money again.
Who would have thought that starting your own business would be so fucking hard. In fact it's not hard, it much worse than that. No wonder so many new business ventures fail within the first 12 months.
With everything going on and my head being in such a twisted state, the one thing I haven't lost sight of, is that there are so many other people out there in worse situations than myself.
9 parlez:
It's undeniably a crap situation but it definitely sounds like you're making steps in the right direction. Wishing you the best of luck.
Keep going!
Yes, it's a pile, but you're still there and still can do. Luck to you!
For what it's worth, I really admire the fact that you're battling on.
I really think you'll make it
X
Thanks for the words of encouragement folks.
Very, very much appreciated.
Shit... what kind of van do you need? And where do you live? I've got a friend, Howard who is a plumber in Nottingham but he is movng to the States to be with his new wife and he might have a van but I've been away so I am not sure... I'll check in again tomoro. Big hugs x
Thanks for the thought treacle, but unless he's willing to part with his van for next to nothing (and closer to nothing)....
Thanks anyway.
I understand all this rather better than I'd like. I'm in the same situation. Depressed, trying to get a business off the ground, failing to be very effective, feeling crap, wishing it would all go away and I could hide in a hole, constantly tearful.
I'm getting through it by reminding myself I can make it stop if I want to. That it doesn't have to be this way. And that I know from experience it never lasts. Sometimes that works and I keep the wallowing at bay, mostly I just stumble around with my head full of dark lists of all the ways in which my life has gone wrong.
But sometimes it works, and that's enough to keep me afloat.
{{MANY EMPATHETIC HUGS}} and if you ever want to email me and swap sob stories or just wibble on about how crap you feel, that's fine by me.
Starting your own business IS hard. But it's worth it, honestly. The hardest thing for me has been getting over that constant 'will the parachute open' feeling, especially when I look at my financial predictions spreadsheet.
And we've been going for four years now.
Er. Hope that that isn't too depressing. I wouldn't go back to working for someone else now, however much money I was offered.
And of course, depression doesn't help. I think it sounds like you're doing pretty well.
Please come back. I was just getting used to you!
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