Naomi is in Ireland and mostly away from all things internet, and so we present for your reading pleasure and general edification Post #3 in the Unofficial List of The Top 15 Best / Favorite / Most Popular IttyBiz Posts.

Originally published January 31, 2008

You’re not alone.

I’m typing this in bed, on the new laptop my IttyBiz readers bought me. (By the way? Thanks for that.) To my right, on the floor, on Jamie’s side of the bed, sit two Macintosh computers. They belong to my mother. For those of you who are new, I’ll take this opportunity to mention that my mother moved to Europe in 2005. I have yet to get off my ass to put them in storage. To my left is a floor full of books. They used to live in my busted chipboard bookshelf, but Jack likes to play with them, taking them down and putting them back in an order he feels is more appropriate. The last time he played this game was about 10 days ago. The books are still on the floor. Neither of us can get into bed from the sides, so we come up from the foot. Read More

Those of you who have been following along on Twitter will know that I got it into my head that with my newfound riches I should get myself an office. Like, the kind that isn’t in my house.

I’m not altogether sure what possessed me to do this — OK, I’m totally sure, I was just trying to get away from my toddler but didn’t want to admit that to several thousand strangers. Whoops! — but I’m doing it and my home business is collapsing around my stubbly ankles.

I kind of thought it would be like picking up my laptop and getting on the bus and buying a soy latte and plugging in my laptop in a separate location and WHAMMO! I’m an office dweller. Well, not so much. Read More

OK, you have to stay with me on this one. I will get around to relating this to home business, I promise, but it’s going to take me a while. So go grab yourself a coffee or a Crown & Coke or whatever because here we go.

The other day I was talking to a very good friend and she said something to me that really got under my skin. She and her boyfriend are looking to buy their first house, and a couple of weeks ago they found perfection — love at first sight. They put in an offer and held their breath. This weekend they just found out that their offer was refused and the owner had sold the house to another couple. Read More

In The E-Myth Revisited — a book which everyone with a home business is expected to say they have read, devoured, and worshiped, even if they thought the running parable was incredibly lame — Michael Gerber talks about owning a business versus owning a job. For those of you who haven’t read it, and have subsequently had your “I’m A Credible Small Businessperson” bumper sticker revoked, I’ll recap.

The very, very, very short version:

If you run a business that won’t make any money if you don’t show up and work, you don’t own a business, you own a job.

Yes, it’s a job that you chose. Yes, it’s a job you can do while watching Ellen and eating stale Doritos from the bag. Yes, it’s a job you do where you don’t have the same boss every day. But it’s a job. Read More

The other day’s post on my defense of paper sparked some interesting discussion, and, put down your wine glass because I know this will come as a shock, I have more to say. Many commentators (yes, I’ve succumbed to “commentators” — I hate the word but I hate the squiggly spell check lines even more) had something to say about Moleskine notebooks, basically that they feel nice and they look nice and are all around cool. My favorite is from here:

“I am as rich as the Queen of England on a day when I have a finely sharpened Faber Castell pencil or two, a nice Moleskin sketchbook, some bon bons and some time.” Read More