Failure is always, always an option

A mere few months ago, I accepted a tempting job offer from one of my clients that–while it didn’t quite sound too good to be true–the salary was enough to entice me to abandon my entrepreneurial dreams and return to the dull-but-secure life of a wage slave. It’s not that being a business owner was such an awful lot, of course. Who wouldn’t enjoy working from home, determining one’s schedule, being able to take a break and play with the cutest dog in the world whenever one wishes? (Well, some of the time, anyway.) If the car needed work (and lately, that seems to be the case), I can simply pack up the laptop and head over to do some work at the Starbucks down the street from the mechanic’s garage. Indeed, the good folks at Honcura will even drive me over there and pick me up when the car’s ready. How much easier could life be?

Still, as anyone who’s ever had their own professional and financial fate in their own hands will know, the dream of being one’s own boss can be a fraught with so much anxiety and uncertainty. I’ve yet to equal the salary I made when I was a working stiff. When you’re not working, you’re not making money. Period. Hence, when B. and I went to Singapore in late 2008 for three weeks so that I could do research on my novel and give B. a bit of a break from his work at the hospital, I took with me several assignments that were due either during my “holiday” or shortly after my return. I wasn’t working the entire time I was in Singapore, but I did have to devote quite a few days while I was there to completing them. I have to say, there’s nothing like filing a column from a rickety old PC in the dark corner of a ramshackle resort lobby on an island somewhere off the western coast of Malaysia. I think it took me thirty nerve-wracking minutes before it finally, mercifully confirmed transmission of my 600-word text document.

Again, when you don’t work, you don’t get paid. There are no paid vacations when you work for yourself. There’s no health insurance, and since I have a pre-existing condition, I rely on B.’s relatively generous health insurance to cover my mild ailments when they arise. And when your laptop is stolen, the replacement comes out of your pocket, not those of any IT department. I wish.

It has its moments, though. In some ways I’d rather be able to take my work with me–to Singapore, India, the Philippines, or wherever life takes us–than to be stuck in a cubicle the remaining 50 weeks of the year. I rather like being able to work from noon until midnight if I wanted, eating from a bottomless bowl of M&Ms and drinking copious amounts of cafes au lait. (Okay, I haven’t done any of these, but the opportunity is always there, which is what counts, non?)

I like being able to take the Dog for an hour’s stroll through the neighborhood, letting him sniff and sniff and sniff to his little heart’s content. He loves it so much it’s heartbreaking to see his big nose soak up what surely must be such a vast landscape of mysterious aromas. He’s so happy that I realize that, in the grand scheme of life, love and the pursuit of the elusive American Dream, no amount of money could possibly make him–and thus, me or B.– any happier.

Still, when an offer is presented to you in such an enticing way, it’s difficult to resist. We don’t live in a cold garret and aren’t starving artists, but we’re cash-poor nonetheless and still have our struggles. The Book is taking longer to write than even I anticipated, my perfectionism and inexperience and own tortured fears getting in the way of its completion. (My graduate thesis advisor’s sage, sober advice still rings in my ear: “It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be done.”) And, well, sometimes, it’s just nice to be able to simply work, not look for work.

So I took the position.

Now, I won’t bore you with all the gory details, but just under two months later, I resigned. One of the main reasons was simply that I found myself working harder than I’d ever worked before, not anytime in my entire life. Every weekday morning, I’d walk the Dog and enjoy our hour-long morning constitution together, but once back at my desk at eight or so I’d be glued to it for the next 14-16 hours, taking only occasional breaks to play with the Dog, microwave my pathetic frozen meals, maybe get a quick kiss from B. On Friday nights I’d be parked in front of my laptop, hopelessly behind, desperately trying to complete one assignment in a list of a dozen while at the same time watching as another dozen or so deadlines would appear in my Inbox.

I enjoyed the work but detested the schedule. Detested it. I don’t eschew hard work and pride myself on my work ethic, but I also enjoy my life and the little pleasures that I find along the way. At 38 I still have boundless energy and can still go for hours on just one cup of cafe au lait and five hours of sleep, especially if I’m in pursuit of a worthy mission, but at some point I deflated. I fell ill twice in as many weeks but still plowed through my to-do list. Christmas shopping was put off until the weekend before the event. Christmas cards still went out, but only barely. I never saw my friends.

Still, it wasn’t enough, at least not for the Company. The work was overwhelming. The rewards? Not so much.

So I quit. I gave the requisite two-week notice and completed as many assignments as I could accomplish in the remaining days of my tenure. I even threw in some extra assignments to cover the Company until my replacement came on board a week after my last day. I gave up not only the steady–if slight–paycheck as well as a big client of mine whom I had brought on board when I became an official employee. The client became their biggest client, but alas, sometimes, you surrender much in order to gain even more.

It’s a chancy decision to make in this economy. You don’t simply give up a good job that, on the outside, looks as close to the ideal as possible: work from home 90% of the time, “flexible” schedule, creative work, interesting clients. Of course, the reality, as to be expected, is always a mere shadow of the ideal. Working from home ended up devouring my home life. The schedule became so rigid as to nearly break the spirit. The work was only creative in the most technical sense. And while some clients had innovative products and services, others had cringe-worthy offerings for which I had to magically create demand. Talk about heartbreaking. The Dog was not happy. And neither were we.

So I’ve returned to the uneasy, uncertain life of the business owner. The money woes still plague us, and there’s the whole relentless task of looking for work. I mourn the loss of that big client, but I console myself by telling myself that he was really better off with the Company anyway. They have more resources and the services that he truly needs, whereas I alone would only have been able to provide him with a small part of it. My own company is expanding in service offerings (where I used to offer primarily copywriting and online marketing/social media consulting, I’ve now added web development and maintenance), so that’s promising. And 2009 was such an annus horribilis that 2010 can only be much, much better. Non? Perhaps it’s misplaced optimism, but doesn’t it always seem that way, especially in the beginning?

What I do know is something that I’ve known for years, ever since I attempted to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, ended up being evacuated off the mountain after a particularly nasty bout of Acute Mountain Sickness, and then had one of the most amazing encounters with a single individual that I’d ever had.

Failure is always, always an option. Indeed, sometimes, it’s the best one.

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