why you may be creating a job and not a business and why that may be ok actually ...

grow something - polarity locket

Before I worked in a bank I did taxes.

I had just been through my first tax season with very demanding clients and an office manager from hell, my daughter was two years old and I really wanted something ... ok I'll just say it ... I wanted something easier.

I applied to a bank for a bank teller job - I could have regular hours and unless I was counting money in my sleep I would not be taking any work home with me.

At the time the bank had a management trainee program where candidates started as bank tellers and progressed to branch managers in a couple years.

The person who interviewed me, seeing my tax background, thought I might be a good fit for this program. I just wanted to be a bank teller.

So, (while the interviewer asked me again if I didn't want a couple days to think about it), I politely declined the management trainee program and became a bank teller.

I loved it.

I loved everything about it. I loved my co-workers. I loved my manager. I loved my customers (mostly). I loved the hours and the holidays (we had A LOT of them).

But maybe most of all I loved leaving that branch and never thinking about it again until I pulled into the parking lot the next morning.

I didn't want a career. I wanted a job.

Now that job lasted about a year before I found out that I was actually more cut out for a career than a job (I  became a manager around the same time the management trainees did, but I think I had a lot more fun getting there). When I think about my 10 year banking career, that very first year holds a lot of great memories for me.

There is nothing wrong with just having a job. Sometimes it's a better place for us. It works until it doesn't.

When I started my first business, people were always giving me the advice - "make sure you are not just creating yourself a job." The 3 letter word would come out of people's mouths all puckery and sour and ... small.

I am not a good advice-taker. So, of course paid no attention.

So, I created a business, but what I really did was build a job for myself.

At that time my mother was very ill and had moved in with us; my uncle who was like a second father to us had just died. My daughter, a latchkey pre-teen, was running amok -

(she denies this and to this day declares me totally nuts for thinking she ever gave us a moment's trouble - "you were lucky to raise me", she says and we were actually, but the truth is she was still running amok .. and her south node Aquarius was clashing with my south node Capricorn BIG TIME)

a business would have been a totally unsustainable thing for me to be building.

I built myself a job.

I had mall carts during the holidays and the mother's day/father's day season and during much of the rest of the year I forgot I even had a business.

Now, another decade or so down the road, I really am building a business. But it's because my life supports it now, not because there is a one way fits all way to do this thing.

You can totally build a job. You can totally build a business.

(and you will most likely need to do both these things at some point because the kind of jobs that other people are building are going other places or disappearing entirely - Kodak had 60,000 employees in its hay-day, Instagram has 13 - annoyingly, it took me a long time to pull up this information because all anyone writes about is how much money a company loses. not so much about how many people lose their jobs)

You can totally do what works best for you and you can totally change that thing you are doing when it isn't working anymore.

We don't need to be doing it as big or as small as anybody else is doing it. We really don't.

why not? print by conilab

anything we know that is googleable isn't worth anything

I was informed last night by a very clever teenager, who may or may not be walking around with a black eye this morning, that anything I know that he can google he knows, too.

And also that inspirational blog posts are really written for the writer and not the reader.

hmmm ....

There is a problem with his way of looking at things, mostly in a "he don't know what he don't know" kind of way, but the truth in it irritated the hell out of me.

Not the inspirational blog post stuff, I already know that.

There being no value in retaining information is a little troubling though - not so much for me, this is actually excellent news for me, since I have lost all ability to retain any information at all, but troubling for us.

Maybe.

The real value of information has always been the way we put it together and make it work - we still need to reframe it. I don't think Google can do this yet. I don't think.

I accidentally banged into this kid with my elbow when he was leaving. At least I hope it was an accident. Smart people make me nervous. Smart alecks made me accident prone. This can make me dangerous.

Also my elbows are extremely pointy - like scary pointy - hubs calls my arms double jointed because they bend backwards at a slightly strange angle and have these pointy elbows like a reptile. I'm not really sure what double jointed means or if there even is such a thing. But wait a minute that would be googleable - so I guess I do know ...

have fun! seriously print by the amazing coni in barcelona

Have some serious fun this weekend - I will be deep into my project - yes, project managers work weekends - I guess we don't know what we don't know either.

my day so far .... a short rant without any actual ranting .....

I have been working with cork all day which is kind of like working with paper.

It leaves my hands dry and flaky and with that awful sensitivity like I just soaked in a tub for 2 hours, but without my Nook and the wine and ... well the soak in a hot tub that makes those puckered fingers all worth it.

While I have been working I am watching one of the Kill Bills - the good one where Uma punches her way out of that coffin, claws her way out of the ground and kicks a one-eyed Darryl Hannah's ass.

This is kind of how I have been feeling lately - sometimes like I am covered in dirt and sometimes like I have just clawed my way out and am ready to take on the world

(I wouldn't take on Darryl Hannah though - she gets arrested every couple years for some eco-'terrorism' plus she was that squeaky voiced mermaid, so I kind of like her).

I am working on a new ... well, I'll just call it a 'project' for now

because 1. I like to think of my work as top secret, like industry spies have infiltrated New Jersey and I may need some Wonka-type maneuvering to outwit them

and 2. I get to call myself a project manager.

I have been doing this for the last couple weeks and I really like the sound of it. I even got to write it on a patient information form for a new doctor, then I got to be particularly vague when she asked me about the type of projects I manage. I may have left her with the impression there is some kind of secret government agency involved ... which might be true, who knows, Olive has been acting a little suspicious lately.

Also today I had a couple people from our local historical society stop by and ask to include our old house on an old house tour - but it turns out our old house isn't old enough .. it just looks old enough. This is probably not a good thing.

You might think I'd be fun to talk to, but I'm not. I think the people from the historical society thought I would be fun to talk to - probably because I was smiling very big when I opened the door (yes, gums and everything I'm not sure why). They quickly realized I am not so good at unstructured conversation, but I am always friendly to historical (I think because I confuse them with hysterical) people.

Anyhoo, that's about all I've got - Uma is about to kill Bill, so I have to get up and turn off the telly, I much prefer happily ever afters .... and how was your day? xo all

another note from the universe ...

No more "supposed tos", ok Cat?

You're not supposed to - work harder, sleep less, sell more, talk slower, run faster, look younger, try harder, do more, stay longer, leave earlier, cook, clean, negotiate, settle, start, stop, move, win, shake, rattle or roll

(well, maybe you are supposed to shake, rattle and roll)

Other people made all that up.

I love you the way you are.

The Universe :)