I was
staring out of the window at the rain coming down in sheets, forming small rivers and pools on the asphalt as the plane I was soon to board was serviced. The arriving passengers had already deplaned about a 1/2 hour ago. I was at the airport again, in a city nearly devoid of character, in a state I’d passed through countless times now. I was grateful for my business affording me the opportunity to apply my skill set to the problem at hand for the company that hired me to do the job, but the time away from family and friends was eating away at me.
I had missed birthdays, family gatherings, holidays, even anniversaries – all due to previous commitments to clients all over the country. One week I was in Florida, the next week in California, still another Colorado, or Arizona, or Minnesota, or Texas, Oklahoma… I started this business to be the master of my own time but it seemed that the business was becoming the master of me. I didn’t mind the hours of extra paperwork, or meeting new clients, I enjoyed that part. It wasn’t the negotiation of price for the job, or travel expenses, or ticketing that had me blue, it was the deafening absence of my loved ones around me, sometimes a month at a time. If your job takes you away to far away places and you no longer feel the semblance of order that you once felt, you know what I was going through.
I was Losing Myself to My Business. One day it stopped, Here’s How:
So one day while I was searching online, I came across a small advertisement that told me of a better way to organize my time and explore my expertise. I was introduced to two mentors who would transform the very nature of how I looked at things. I was re-introduced to a book I read seven years earlier that compelled me forward then. It captures the very essence of the enjoyable life I was searching for, and one of these two mentors suggested reading it – so I read it again and was so inspired that I edited a new edition for you that can be found here. My mentors told me that today’s digital lifestyle is a laptop lifestyle, a coffee shop lifestyle where you can literally run your business from around the world so long as you have a computer and an Internet connection. Today, I am in the office, but just a while ago I was at the beach.