Start (All Over Again!)

"The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step." - Lao Tzu

I'll bet I've read that quote a thousand times (okay, maybe not a thousand, but definitely a lot). I've even read it recently. Though I don't remember exactly where it's likely I came across it in a business start-up book. I've read a lot of those over the past 20 years because that's about how long I've been actively thinking about starting my own business.

Hmmm. Notice I said actively thinking. Actually, I started thinking about having my own business, my own creative endeavor when I was eighteen. I wanted to go to school and learn to be a self-employed illustrator and cartoonist. That was, of course, 40 years ago. But fearful images of becoming the next starving artist kept me from any serious pursuit of such a dream. 

Still, I couldn't completely shake the idea of doing something, creating something, that was mine. 

In 1999 the idea again resurfaced. I was a frustrated educator and not-very-good administrator in a small private school. The experience helped me see that "teaching" fit me (to a degree) but "administrating" did not. Family and friends encouraged me to follow my dream -- but I just couldn't see it! I had others who depended on me financially and I felt I needed to take some next logical step that would allow me to provide for them.

I did what a lot of you might choose to do: I went back to school. I studied computers and research. But another year -- and thousands of dollars -- didn't really bring me any closer to my own dream. Then I had to pay for what I learned (literally and metaphorically), so I've spent most of the last 15-16 years in publication work, sales, and marketing. Those years have actually been helpful, and the debt's long paid.

It's finally time for a change. I'll be 60 in a few months, and after a lot of thinking I decided to do what probably most of you would not do at my age: I resigned my full-time job. Today is my first day as a self-employed creative. Today I'm actively doing the work of starting my own business.