Diary of a future rentier (82)

My small independent side business is still in the development phase. It went very well with my test client. I managed to convince him and he is now a regular customer. In addition to earning me a few pennies, this activity gives me a lot of satisfaction. I feel like I'm doing something useful and meaningful, something I've never experienced with my salaried job in over 20 years. A shame.

Now that I have some perspective, I realize that ultimately it is quite easy to make a professional activity interesting. First of all, there must be an interest in the field. You can't make a donkey drink if it is not thirsty. However, that is not enough. Even an exciting subject can become boring if it is thought of or organized according to the aspirations of a third party. What is missing is self-determination, in the philosophical sense of the term. When you have control, everything immediately takes on more meaning, and everything also becomes simpler.

I thought long and hard about how this activity would be structured before I started. I absolutely wanted to avoid anything that tends to distort our professional tasks, emptying them of their substance. I am thinking mainly of administrative work (in particular email), sterile and interminable discussions (meetings) and the complexity of decision-making and problem-solving processes (linked to procedures/directives as well as the multiplicity of chains of command). In short, everything had to remain as simple as possible. Self-determination eradicates or at least greatly reduces most of the aforementioned problems. Not to mention that we take pride in having achieved something that fully corresponds to us.

I am now starting to prospect for new clients, but the health crisis is really not making things easy. I realize the ordeal that small business owners are going through right now. All these restrictions are a calamity for entrepreneurship. I am really lucky not to have to rely on this income.

I set myself a ceiling of four recurring clients. I imagine that when normal life has more or less resumed, this should be a fairly easy goal to achieve. Achieving this goal will give me the psychological help I need to get through the final hurdle, that of leaving employment for good.