People keep asking me, “how is the business going?”
I’m sitting in my bedroom, my daughter is coughing in her sleep in the room next door, I’m feeling an overwhelming abundance of different emotions. Frustration, anxiety, guilt, a deep concern for my daughter and empathy for her being so sick. It’s all almost incestuous the way the feelings are all interconnected.
I’m at the end of my tether with yet another personal day taken away from my fledgling business and potentially wasted opportunities. Trying to get my “so-called” business functioning on a day to day basis is like watching a piece of rope fray in front of you. Just as I feel as though I’m making headway, getting my f****s in a row, something changes to upset the equilibrium. Usually one of us gets ill, or a collaboration falls through, or me taking something too personally. But, mostly it’s the enormity of what I want to achieve bearing down on me, making me feeling like an anchorless boat at sea and the waves of reality crashing down on top of me. Hold on folks, this could get totes emosh!
If I’m totally honest, I feel utterly isolated by this endeavour. It is an utterly unique business, there is no wireframe for it. I’m cherry-picking from other businesses that inspire me and trying to make it fit. It’s not. I have so many ideas ad no one to help me formulate them. On the other hand, I have so many questions, business related queries, about the direction of the business and status of the “company”. But, there’s just me and Swedish Goggle…we often don’t get on. My experiences of Stockholm Startup and Nyföretägscentrum were less than impressive. I feel that going back there like a screaming banshee and waving my arms around like a petulant child until I get what I want from them won’t get me far.
But, the isolation also comes in the form of, “Why the f*** am I doing this?! Who for?” A question that has rolled around my prefrontal cortex for some time. Am I actually helping anyone? What is tough is not even being certain that friends and family understand what you do. I’m pretty sure I have at least a handful of friends who haven’t even visited our landing page. Now, I take things very personally, I’ve had to work pretty hard on developing a thicker skin in my vocational life. But, when it’s your own business, it takes a special kind of thicker skin to let that wash over your back.
People keep asking me how my business is going. It’s very kind of them to ask. But, I cringe and laugh using my one-liner “the only reason it’s a business is because of the extortionate tax rates I pay to the Swedish Taxman”, ha ha. The thing I really want to do is so beyond reason that I’m struggling to get any enjoyment out of what I’m doing right now. Perhaps, that’s just the lack of vitamin D, the isolation and loneliness talking.
For Littlebearabroad to continue I need to find a mentor or partner. I don’t mean a new life partner. He has a job. He HAS TO HAVE A JOB or we’d be homeless, shoeless pedalers. But, he can’t strategise with me, he can’t commit the time this project is needed to bring about fundraising endeavours and networking opportunities. He doesn’t have the knowledge or experience of business in that sense anyway. The awful thing is, I’m not sure there is anyone out there that could do that.