Start-up Burn-out

Well, I now feel I can safely blog about it without feeling really, really bad. Or maybe I should say depressed, stressed, mad - you get the picture.  Somewhere around September and in the midst of the financial crisis at that time, I reached my burn-out point.  Just couldn't handle it anymore.  Something had to give.  I kept limping along though, thought the November break in Maz would fix me up, and then - another financial crisis.  And at Christmas.

The company Mike was contracting with in Sacramento was supposed to send the first deposit since he started working for them on Nov. 3 by bank transfer on Dec. 23.  Had it arrived on time, a lot of grief would have been avoided.  I would have been able to get presents for the guys at least.  But everything that could go wrong, did go wrong, and it continued until well past the first week of January.  I won't go into detail, but things got royally screwed up (again) and I reached my breaking point.  Anger was my primary emotion.  Frustration was my secondary emotion.  Not just with whoever screwed up our receivables, but EVERYONE and EVERYTHING, including myself and Mike.  I informed him in no uncertain terms that I was not going to do this anymore, and software development were words NOT to be used around me.  I was done.  Financial uncertainty was to end, debts were to be brought under control, and "rocky" would be a mild word to describe the marriage.

In very short order, I hired a company to take over all finances for both companies and personal, packed up the condo and hired a moving company to come and put it all in storage, got some good drugs and therapy (which I was already in since September), bought a ticket to Mazatlan and left the cold and snowy city of Calgary, and hopefully much of the stress, behind me.

Thanks to my wonderful therapist, Ella, I have a mantra now - "I am peacefully present".   I use it whenever I notice that my mind is in stress-mode, worry-mode, thinking about the past or the future, not even in the same place as my body - its off somewhere else, somewhere that can't possibly be as beautiful and wonderful as Mazatlan.  So I bring it back - often.  And I'm feeling much, much better.

Mike will be here soon, for short visits until he can get some extended time off.  He keeps the software fires burning; it's a dream he can't let go -  but I'm not participating in that.  It will or it won't succeed.  Maybe I'll get some of that fire back at some point - I don't know.  For now, I am peacefully present.

Workin' like a dog...

Mazatlan, here I come!  Sadly, only for 9 days though.  I am so busy keeping so many plates spinning it's not funny. The summer was one of the most stressful periods of time in my life - but I survived.  Mike spent several weeks in Florida on contract and the first payment on that job was delayed for about a month due to the client not handling the setup of the purchase order/invoice/payment process properly.  It was a lot of money, and we weren't able to absorb the gap in receiving funds.  Oh, what I wouldn't give for a huge line of credit!  It screwed up our finances for a while, but all is back to normal now (our "normal").

Andy, our lead programmer, took off on one his expeditions across the US in his camper in September, and he hasn't come back yet.....However, he still does a lot of work from the road - he just finds a campground with good internet and codes away.  He stays on Skype all the time and communicates that way.  We now have another programmer working part-time from Mexico (Carlos), and he and Andy actually work together while "talking" on Skype.  They both dial into the software development server and put their coding on it.  Kind of cool.

Our focus for the software has morphed into something new as a result of working with a marketing/business-plan advisor over the summer and fall.  He really forced us to narrow down the best market and we ended up with a whole new identity.  But OneFileEverywhere is still going to be a product onto itself and has been developed quite a bit in the last few months.  Its in Beta testing now and available to use for free at http://demo.onefileeverwhere.com   We've been getting a lot of work done on things like logos and website design, and creating a brochure and writing the business plan.

Its been great that Mike has had 2 months at home between consulting gigs to put a lot of time and focus on the software companies.  We are working out our condo office and enjoying downtown living.  Being here has really allowed us to just keep our focus on working.  No house or yard to upkeep.  The dogs get us out of the office several times a day for walkies.

But now life is going to change gears again - Mike is off to Sacramento for a 3 month engagement, and I am heading to Mazatlan for a break and then back home for a couple of weeks before going down to join Mike for a couple of weeks.  Then it will be Christmas.  We might just head to Vegas for Christmas.....