Reboot

In the past week, two people have told me that they are leaving behind the world of self-employment and being their own boss.  In both cases, the combination of stress and lack of financial payoff were causing them to abandon their dreams or at least back-burner them for an indefinite length of time.

The cost of those dreams can outweigh the benefits.  The stress alone can kill you.  Tasks you thought you could manage alone get too time consuming to manage alone.  People can let you down.  Clients can be unreasonable.  Communication becomes a chore.  Everything takes longer than you thought and "setting your own schedule" becomes working 24/7.  Personal finances and business finances can get blurred.  It is rare that a body can juggle all that without incident.  Life IS surprises.  Life is all about plan B.  

The skill you love to do must be balanced with self-promotion and professional development.

And on and on...

So it is time for a reboot.

Unnecessary definition: That is computer vernacular for shutting down and starting over.  Information and programs get a fresh start up, a new running of the commands that make them perform- updates and deletions get reshuffled.  Inexplicable ghosts in the machine can be ironed out.  Sometimes that is just the trick.

Except this time it's your life.

You have more invested in that.  It feels catastrophic.  It feels like a failure.  Humbling...no, humiliating.

Yet on the other side of the reboot there is hope.  Realignment.  Restoration.  It could take time before you find 'normal" again.  You might never regain the same boldness that led you off on the road less traveled, or you might, depending on how you process the journey.  You have unlimited reboots, you don't have unlimited time.