“Jump and a net will appear” were the words of wisdom that a colleague at Microsoft have me as I took the plunge into working free range done five and a half years ago.
The first year felt like free fall. Should I give up, get a “proper job”, knuckle down, put up with things? And then after 12 months things started to slot into place and work started to flow and it’s been a bit of a charmed existence since. Peaks and troughs, but a fairly constant flow of work, with interesting challenges and new sectors and great people.
But it’s slowed down a bit since the autumn, and whilst there’s plenty of work in the future, mostly still to be actually nailed down, it gets scary when you don’t know what will be coming next. The imposter syndrome rears its head, maybe I’ve been found out? The fear. The sense of being on a treadmill. The loneliness.
Because it’s at points like this, where you don’t have a team around you, there’s no office to go to, when it can all get terribly introspective. When I need to keep in mind that nets will appear because I’ve been busy weaving them for the past five and a half years.
mmitII 