I'm in the last stretch of the six month mark of working full-time for my business, and I finally feel the loneliness of being the only employee in the shop.
In the view of my friends, this is the life. I get to work on my own terms -- no manager breathing down my neck, no morning meetings to discuss data analysis of the previous day, no presentations to give to the director, etc.
But in reality, I experience a lot of those things in a different way. I don't have a manager, but I have my own conscience that is constantly thinking about when I need to ship bags and whether I should skip lunch or dinner so I can get bags made in time for shipment.
No morning meetings, but instead I spend the first 1.5 hours of my morning answering Etsy convos, e-mails, and I analyze the data from Google Analytics to see how I can improve my web presence and sales.
I don't give presentations to any directors, but I do have craft sales where I feel like I'm giving a presentation (to potential customers) in hopes of receiving some positive feedback on my progress.
Running a business is tough because you're playing so many roles from administrative work, customer service, manufacturing, photography, modeling, marketing, selling, and packaging for shipping. All done by one person. With no one else to talk to and bounce ideas off of to improve work efficiency (though I do get a lot of feedback from The Boy on ways to improve the business work flow).
I will admit, it is nice working from home, though it does get lonely as my only conversations are to my pug Hubert, and to my Facebook/Twitter friends. It's good, but not nearly as fun as talking face to face with a human being. Plus, I think this is slowly degrading my verbal communication skills.
The times I look forward to most are when The Boy comes home for lunch. That's when I get to see and speak to a person, and it feels really great to have an hour or more to have that needed conversation to get me through the rest of my day. It's when The Boy has lunch with his co-workers when my workday is the worst. It's a full 9-12 hours of no human interaction. Fortunately, those are rare.
But I won't ramble on too long about working alone at home. It started snowing here just a couple hours ago, and it was just the break I needed to stop sewing, put on my winter boots and coat and take some pictures. I hope you enjoy!
