It’s been a busy month on all fronts. The month of April takes in easter and therefore there’s been school holidays, time at home on my own while the kids and Mrs MB3 go exploring, weekends away with the family, and even a weekend away with Mrs MB3. I’ve also been thinking about Morris Dancers and listening to conversations between my brain, my body and my leg.
It’s not felt too busy at work but I seem to have billed a healthy amount, and I take that situation as a positive sign that I’m getting into my stride in business and – more importantly – getting into the mindset of a business owner rather than a person with a job-job.
Bank Balance
A decent month at the air-conditioned coal face included some good billing and more importantly, some good paying from esteemed clients. It’s all very well sending off invoices but that they’re paid should never be taken for granted. Thankfully, I haven’t had any bad debt yet, and don’t mind the odd late payment as it embeds a nice debt in the emotional bank account when things are paid off a bit late (as well as an opportunity / reason to make contact with your buyer to enquire about the whereabouts of the dough.
The scores don’t yet show a great deal of movement of the blue bar, but I’ve paid myself to cover living for the next three months and any money the business makes over that period will be net worth enhancing. I’m still plotting and planning for a decent mortgage payment in the next 6-12 months which will be both net worth enhancing and monthly commitment reducing.
Overall, I’m happy with the way we play good defence in our house and confident in my ability to play good enough offence to keep the show on the road and edge towards making work optional. What a great thing to be able to write and I think I’m arriving at a good level of comfort with the statement and sentiment.
I also signed off and submitted my company’s first year accounts. An underwhelming milestone of course but one that would have been a very big deal to younger me!
Mind
As the positive tone of this update so far indicates, we’re in pretty good fettle here at the moment. Previous posts have indicated a level of confusion and even a bit of guilt about my in-betweener status (not being rich yet but far from being poor – and the dip in motivation that brought), but this month I’ve spotted a few subtle yet important and positive shifts in my mindset. I realised something important about ‘downtime’. What I mean by downtime is time that I’m not doing much. Time that I’m not billing to a client or spending selling things to clients. This time is spent walking running, watching TV or generally goofing off. I have realised that I hold entirely competing thoughts about that time and that’s OK.
Those competing thoughts are:
1) ‘ha ha this is brilliant. I’m on a different path to those 9-5ers. Behold as I express and enjoy my autonomy.’ and
2) ‘Oh no. I’m a loser. I should be working. By working I’ll be making money for my family as well as making the most of my training and qualifications. I should stop being so lazy and do something’.
The key shift here is deciding that it’s OK to hold competing thoughts about the same thing. If i spend my downtime debating whether I feel OK about it or not it’s not good. If I accept that it’s got both negative and positive meaning for me, I can just get on with my day.
Holding competing thoughts is, to some, a sign of lacking decisiveness or opinions. But I don’t think that’s true. For instance, Morris Dancers and Park Run are two concepts I hold competing thoughts about and why should I decide?
Body
It’s been another busy month of running. This is a good thing but there’s danger ahead. I’m in clear danger of over-doing it. I’ve a niggling injury which won’t go away and I’m continuing to run on. Once I’m warmed up the pain fades away but it’s taking me longer to recover and the injury is painful when I’m not running. Silly me, I need to listen to my body and chill, but here’s the conversation between brain and body.
- Body: Ok brain we’re out and about now. Let’s take it easy so that the leg doesn’t get any worse.
- Brain: Good point brain, let’s take it easy today. We don’t need any heroics today, and it’s more important for the leg to be in good shape in the long term than it is to post good times on Strava today.
- Body: Thanks brain, we knew you’d understand
- 3 miles later
- Brain: Let’s push this next couple of miles, everything seems ok.
- Leg: You wanker
The good news is that Mr Leg, while experiencing some pain is not getting any worse and overall the running is going well.
I’m thinking about starting to lift a few weights. Let’s see where that one goes, because for now I’m about the running and enjoying it very much.
Here’s the other thing though: The more serious I get about the running, the less my mind wanders while I’m at it. I used to do god thinking while I was out running, now that I’m timing myself and thinking about pace my mind is less free to wander. This is not a good thing. I really should leave the watch at home but I’m enjoying monitoring my progress.
In summary:
Hay fever aside, April has been a good month here at MB3. I hope you are all well (all 820 people who’ve visited the site since its inception that is). Thanks for reading and be good.