What am I doing here?
I love following directions. I love step by step processes. I love the story of the teacher who says “make sure your read all the way through before you begin” who ends that assignment with cancelling the assignment. I read all the way through.
Recipes. Lego sets. Puzzles. Sudoku. Quilting. I love being told what to do.
So what am I doing here in the full adventure of entrepreneurial living?!
The combination of incorporating “best practices” with “what fits me” and “what serves our goals” AND “how will this work in partnership with Marc” is one of the strangest and most exciting parts of our journey.
Reasons I don’t think I would make an easy transition to employment:
- I can’t leave a system alone… I love the play table of experimentation
- Afternoon Naps
- Getting to build and dream alongside Marc about life and work
- Independence (and arrogance) – I would like to say that I am teachable, but a lot of the time I believe I see a better way (and have been told that I’m right).
- Loyalty – I like that my work loyalty is to me and Marc, and to our clients, and to our family
- Arguing with the Boss (Marc and I share the role of boss) – it has taken me a lot of life to learn how to have a really good productive argument. I’m still holding onto enough of people pleasing that I can’t imagine arguing with someone as well as I can argue with Marc (or myself).
Things that sometimes make me consider acquiring an employer:
- benefits (guys, buying health insurance every year is not fun)
- turning my brain off – sometimes I imagine that if I worked for someone I could just punch the clock, do the minimal, and give my brain a break. (I don’t actually think I could live this way, but I imagine it.)
- someone else’s problem – the toilet, the leak, the internet – being an entrepreneur (that works at home) means that all the issues are the owner/bosses issues.
I have been making the same pizza dough almost every weekend for probably 15 years. For a short time in Maine, we had a bread maker and we adapted this ‘focaccia’ recipe to be the pizza dough for our family pizza (&movie) night. I haven’t had to look at the recipe for years. Around one o’clock in the afternoon of pizza night, I go to my stand mixer, make the dough, and it rises on the counter all afternoon.
Being an entrepreneur, being in an entrepreneurial relationship, has become a bit like the pizza dough recipe. It’s just the way we do life. Yes, there is still growth and learning to do. Yes, there are more ideas (and more ideas and more ideas) we need to prioritize. And as much as I love being told what to do, I also love our family pizza dough. So I guess the path we are on is the one I’ll choose for the next couple decades.
