Free from 9 to 5

I haven’t had time to write many new blog entries the past 2 weeks due to 2 reasons:

1. Extra hours at the Corporation
2. Buying a house

I’m getting married at the end of this year and have been looking for a house for the past year. Home prices in Southern California are absolutely ridiculous. I refuse to pay 450K for a 900 sq. ft. home. But I recently came across an 1800 sq. ft. house that seems like a great value given this market. I made an offer, it was accepted, and I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Perhaps the house inspection will turn up why the house is priced so reasonably.

My other concern is that the housing bubble will pop shortly after I close on this house. The bubble is suppose to have popped every year for the past 3 years now, but still hasn’t popped yet. But I want a place of my own and I’m buying for the long term, so even if housing prices take a nosedive, I figure I can wait it out. The house is in a great neighborhood as well, so hopefully the local effects of the bubble popping will be minimal.

The house is not mine yet, but taking on this new huge expense would make my day job less of a safety net. I already feel an extra surge of motivation to get my software released (really close now!), as well as to look into offering more products for sale on my fiance’s wedding accessories side business. I’ve determined that drop shipping suppliers are the way to go for that right now and will be doing research into that area in the near future.

In a previous post, I talked about my refusal to work overtime and how that probably won’t be an option as deadline approaches. The deadline is here and I was right. The lack of posting the past week has been due to working late hours at the Corporation. My group isn’t going to meet its deadline, so the usual finger pointing game is about to begin. Had I agreed to work overtime back then, I probably would have met the deadline for my tasks, but the group as a whole still wouldn’t have. This just means I join the firing line as the manager questions why the deadline slipped.

I can say that this is the first time in my professional career I missed a deadline and I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I don’t like missing deadlines. I feel like I let people down (why these people care is another topic). On the other hand, I’m not inclined to work 50-60 hour weeks for weeks on end, even if paid for it. My job isn’t my life, and my choices are starting to reflect that. But I mostly feel numb. It doesn’t bother me a whole lot that I missed the deadline. And other than working a few extra hours, I’m not making any heroic efforts like I would have in my youth. Is this from growing older or from growing more cynical? Is there a difference when you work for Corporate America?

I want to start my own business for more flexibility in my time. I understand I will work even more hours than at my day job, but it will be hours of my choosing and it will hopefully be more enjoyable hours, working for myself instead of someone else.

Mike King has a different take on things. Currently working at a SmallCorp, he is looking to find a job at a BigCorp in order to free his time and his mind to concentrate on his personal life. I can say that he will definitely find his mind freer at a BigCorp; things happen so slowly that you can’t help but have some idle time once in a while. And you can usually leave everything at work at the end of the day, both physically and mentally.

I want to work for OwnCorp for the Very Flexible Time Regimen. It sounds like Mike wants to work for BigCorp for the minimal Daily Hours. This table is very simplified. It doesn’t include commute, mobility (ability to work over Internet vs. fixed physical location) or management attitude, but I think it helps to see what some of the trade-offs are when choosing who to work for.

I’ve been writing software my entire academic and professional career. When writing software in college, software is done when it compiles without errors. (Oh, and when it meets the assignment description.) Out in the business world, software is done when it meets the requirements and the testing person/department rubber stamps it (Not really, but close enough).

What about in a one man micro-ISV? I want to get the first release out as soon as possible, so I’m not packing it with hundreds of features; just the ones that are core to its operation. Extra and whiz-bang features can come in future releases. So I have simple requirements and verified that all of them are met. My experience tells me that it’s ready to go. But something is holding me back from releasing it. Since this is my own personal creation, I want to make sure it is as good as gold. I’ve been testing it to death, making doubly sure it’s solid. Because this is my reputation at stake here. And although probably untrue, I feel that this first release will make or break my dreams of being free from 9 to 5. My feelings and anxieties are probably normal, but for those that have released software successfully, what advice do you have for dealing with this?

(In addition to the software I’m actually selling, I’m also writing software to set up a fully automated sales process integrated with PayPal, and an affiliate program where sales referrals earn you 15% of the sales price, and you get 5% of sales referred by affiliates that you recruit to sign up. There should be more details by the end of this month! But I’m glad to report that I’m in the home stretch now, testing my software and making sure the sales and distribution infrastructure is in place.)

My fiance is a very artsy and crafty person. She recently made a ring bearer pillow, flower girl basket and garter for a close friend of ours who was getting married. I was amazed at the quality of her work (no bias here, really ) and consequently took pictures of the wedding set she made to post in an eBay auction. Lo and behold, someone bought it, so she made another set and we shipped it (after taking more pictures).

Then another friend saw the first set she made and wanted one to give as a gift. My fiance sold yet another set. This led me to whip up a simple e-commerce website for her: www.elegantweddingshoppe.com.

I also put up another eBay auction, but no one bid this time and the auction expired with no winner. I’ve since listed another eBay auction and we are trying again. This happened in a matter of weeks, but the great thing was, aside from the cost of the ebay/paypal fees and domain registration fee, which totaled less than $20, we didn’t have to put any money upfront to start this business.

I still need to learn how to market better and bring more visitors, but even with just 2 sales, this unexpected and unanticipated business venture is quite exhilarating. And I could use any marketing tips that you have!

With my reluctance to work for the Man growing stronger and stronger with each passing day, I better make darn sure my businesses-in-progress will work out for the long term before quitting my job. Because once I do, I don’t think I can go back to working in a corporate purgatory. Even now, my tolerance for corporate stupidity and red tape is dwindling. I mean the hoops I had to jump through this past week just to get a static IP address! I had to go through 6 layers of people and it took a whole week just for a stinking IP address. This was for a piece of lab equipment that I couldn’t do anything further without, so just the lost productivity alone cost at least $2,000. Unfortunately, I don’t think quitting my day job is a viable option for quite a while yet.

But sometimes I think my day job is too much of a safety net. My motivation and drive may kick into a higher gear if I don’t have this day job to fall back on. On bad days, I want to just quit and make a go at it on my own, but any way I look at it, that would be an emotional decision, not a rational or wise decision. And with marriage coming into the picture, I have more than myself to think of. So I have no immediate or even short term plans to quit my job. But I can dream, right?

I switched webhosts last night for this site. Please let me know if you see any weirdness occurring.

The very act of moving forward reveals doors to you not previously revealed.

I forgot where I read that, probably from Steve Pavlina again, but I’m finding it to be true. I’m not at my destination yet, but from where I was 3 months ago, with just a day job and wishful thinking, I now have a blog, some blogosphere relationships, a software idea and a software application (or close to one). It all started with just getting started:

• I started this blog in mid-March 2005.
• I met people (other bloggers) I wouldn’t have known if I didn’t start this blog.
• One of these blogger’s post gave me an idea.
• I coded a software app.
• Developing this app gave me ideas for TWO other related apps.
• I now have a fledgling software shop of my very own!

By no means is this supporting me or anywhere close to freeing me from my 9 to 5 job yet, but things are looking a great deal brighter now. And it all started with the mere act of starting a blog.

3 months ago, I knew starting a blog wouldn’t in any way free me from my 9 to 5 job. But I didn’t know what else to do, so I just did something related, anything, and this blog was it. One thing led to another and I’m working towards my very own software shop now. There’s something very liberating about knowing this that makes my 9 to 5 job a bit more tolerable (just a bit though). And I have to believe that this new direction I’m embarking on is how my newfound attitude towards deadlines and overtime came about.

In an earlier post, I mentioned how, for the first time in my employed life, I chose to no longer scramble to meet a deadline. Here’s another first: I denied their request for overtime this week.

It came as a request, not a demand, so I said no. I used to feel pressure (from myself) to work overtime when asked. I always wanted to be a good little employee. This time, however, I did not want to be a corporate sheep. A colleague later asked me why I’m not working overtime. I told him I took their polite request at face value and made my choice. He said he took it as a mandate and seemed genuinely surprised that I didn’t take it as such. Who’s right? I don’t know, but I do know I value my time far more than what they’ll be paying me for overtime, especially since I’ve started to work on my own software. So I made my decision based on that. I sense that as the deadline approaches, I may no longer have a choice; I still need this job so I’ll assent to overtime at that time. But until then, I choose time for myself and my own projects over more money.

I don’t keep tabs on the web stats for this site. I’m not selling anything or engaged in any popularity contests, so I haven’t checked out the stats since the first few days after I started this blog. But in preparation for launching the website for my software product, I am researching web stats and how to use them. First stop was the stats for this blog. I didn’t expect much since I hardly get any comments on my posts, but I was surprised I was getting so many visitors and hits (relatively speaking, of course):

May’s barely started and if thing’s keep up like this, I’m on par to break 2,000 unique visitors and 32,000 hits this month.

So I’m curious, who are you lurkers??? I’m not usually a comment whore, but just this once, please leave a comment and introduce yourselves, or just leave me your website address if you have one! I’d like to know you!

Update 5/8/05 evening: Or if you don’t want to leave a public trail on the Internet, email me! (eric@freefrom9to5.com) I totally understand and I’d still love to hear from you.