I have learned over the years that self-employment and working from home can occasionally create some misconceptions from the 9-5 world. While raising my kids in public school I was able to volunteer and be in the kid’s classroom. I attended most of the field trips and at one point I helped out a couple of hours every week. This was during the early years, at this point our business was part-time and my husband still worked full time at a “day job” in addition to working the events. I did bookkeeping whenever it was necessary.
Eventually, the conception became that I didn’t have to work and was available all the time. For the most part, this was true. I was available all the time for my kids, and oftentimes for my kid’s friends. I wouldn’t have it any other way. In the early years, this was much easier. As our business began to grow, my availability became more challenged. However, the outside world vision of me being always available remained the same.
The Positives Outweigh the Negatives…On most Days
There are so many advantages to self-employment. When people get frustrated working in the corporate world, it is easy to only see the positive side of business ownership. The reality is there are many sacrifices that are made when you own your own business. There is a box we get to check on our taxes that states “at-risk” that determines how we take deductions. At risk is a scary thought, and especially early on it is in your face more than you care to know. The key is to be ahead of that risk. To the outside world, it appears that we have A LOT of time off because we work events we don’t have to GO to work every day.
Feel Free to Work All You Want
The reality is that we do work every day. I mentioned before a business is like a child, it needs nurturing to continue to grow or even sustain. I often say that there are 24 hours in a day and we get to work all of them. Fortunately it is not often we work all of them consecutively. We literally have to work at having free time. It becomes so easy to incorporate work into everything you do. Dinner conversations, an afternoon at the river, and even date nights become business conversations. You may be asking “then why do it if its so bad?”, the thing is it isn’t bad, it just is. Some days may be very frustrating, especially the ones when we have had to work 24 hours consecutively. Thank goodness those days are few and far between.
Business Ownership is Give and Take
The reality is that business ownership is very rewarding. Doing office work after my kids went to bed was worth it. Especially if it meant I could be there for their field trips and class parties. If they needed to go to the doctor I could just go when the dr had availability, no boss to ask. I will admit that there have been some days that we have had to make sacrifices, some quite large I may add, With that, we have asked ourselves if it is worth it. At one point we had to really consider what we were doing, but here we are still going, still making plans for the future of our company. Thankfully most days the rewards outweigh the negatives.
