Luxury: A Rant

Photo by Gunnar Ries via Flickr. Used under a Creative Commons agreement.

Time is a gift. It is a luxury. I am certain that many entrepreneurs are in the same spot that I am right now. We are busting our collective asses.

We do this every day.

Every day, we go to day jobs that we dislike, to feed our families and continue with health insurance. We finish with that 8-hour day, thinking at the end of it, "If I had just spent those 8 hours on my business--I could be so much more successful!" But we are trapped, because our businesses do not feed our families, yet.

Yet.

We leave that job and go pick up our kid(s) from school. We then go home and get them started on homework while we start on our second shift. This shift has several components:

• homework with the kid
• dinner
• laundry
• business work

All of these things happen simultaneously, somehow. The business work gets started, and then it falls apart because our spouse put the packing tape in his/her car. So the business work shifts and something else gets done. But then our kid needs help with her homework, so we stop that. She also says she's hungry, and our spouse is tired from working on business work all day, so we get some sort of food cooking. While it is in the oven, we go back to the business work, until the homework needs interrupt again.

We then try to sit down and eat in peace for five minutes, once.

After dinner, we continue with the business work until we are too tired to see straight. This tells us it is time for our kid to take a bath and get ready for bed. During bathtime, we wash our faces and brush our teeth, and then we get the kid into bed and read a chapter of Harry Potter. After that, we collapse into bed, but then get up because we forgot to take our glucosamine/put the laundry in the dryer/feed the pets/stamp a letter. Then we go back to bed and try to fall asleep, but ideas about the next day's plan of attack.

The whole time, we try to remain hopeful that all this work will pay off in the end. What does "pay off" mean? To me, it means making enough money on my own so that I don't have to have that 8 hour job. It means spending those hours at home, so that my evenings can be spent paying actual attention to my family.

Where is the rant in this? Here it is. While working, I am sometimes on social networks online (Facebook and Twitter, mostly). Some of it is marketing, and yes, some of it is distracting.

Some of the distractions make me want to vomit. To wit:

"Oh, look at these cute cookies!"

"This video of a camel spitting on some douchebag is priceless."

"I am so bored. I think I'll nap on the couch."


Nap? Nap? Who are these people, and why are they my "friends?" Cookies? Videos? BOREDOM? And some of them write sanctimonious blog entries about how we need to save the planet by doing this/that/the other.

Some days it's enough to put me over the edge. Straight over the edge of reason into full-fledged WTF mode. I feel like my head is going to explode. I feel like I hate complete strangers. I am JEALOUS.

Yes, it's all jealousy. It's a reflection on my poor character. I long for the days when all I had to do was go to work and come home. But no--I have to be an entrepreneur, launching a new project, in the middle of my other businesses' busy season. Because I am an idiot.

Right now, I DO BEGRUDGE YOU YOUR FREE TIME.

Don't worry. I'll get over it when I have some time to sleep. Right now, I can't take it.

As I often do, I'm asking again: Am I the only one, here? Is it really just me?