On Being Self-Employed

Roughly a month ago I opened my own business: IT assitance, maintenance and repair of computers and all related activities.

It only took a few hundred euros for the paperwork and to buy a starter set of tools, spares and equipment and I was ready to go.

Some marketing efforts so far have brought me only a couple of customers - plus one guy with quite unreasonable requests and very stingy one who seems not to understand that as a professional I sell my time.

Ok, so except for the money side I quite like this. I like working on computers, the hardware part even moreso, and I like being indipendent on the job.

Yes, indipendence is the key. Maybe it's because my particularly distasteful work experience of 2007: to make a long story short, the work was long periods of boredom punctuated by the occasional flurry of menial activity - it got really interesting only a couple of times in four months. And the boss, gawd... to say that our personalities were utterly incompatible would be a pitiful understatement. He was (and still is) an insufferable old goat. No it's not only about me: the company has quite a long record of employees getting the hell out of there after a few months.

That aside, I discovered I love being a craftsman: build and repair thing fascinates me, it is something I never have enough of. Yes, sometimes it becomes frustrating, sometimes I give up... but perhaps I wake up in the middle of the night with the right idea to finish a job I could not complete during the day.

So I'll keep trying to run this business and let's see if it takes off within the next few months.