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.

The point is, I’ve totally bailed on y’all the last few days and frankly, that will probably continue for a few more while I grovel and beg for forgiveness from those of you who are actually paying me and not just hanging out in my comments for free.

In the meantime, go read somebody else’s stuff. I have a feeling this article will change lives. It’s long. Don’t skim.

Back soon!

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Apr 22, 2008 in Home Business Psychology - 8 Comments
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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.

Naturally, she was disappointed. But what really seemed to annoy me was just how much it seemed to get her down. After all, at least she had someone she loved, they both have great jobs and good health, and at least they’re in the position to buy.

I was feeling jealous because Naomi and I would like to buy a house but can’t right now.

I was feeling petty and believing that any problems Naomi and I had were much more serious than just not getting the house we wanted. After all, there are plenty of houses out there and my friend just needs to keep looking. I didn’t like that I was feeling this way so I started thinking about it. I came up with a theory.

The Re-Calibrating Happiness Scale Theory

Most of us believe that events come along with their own preset happiness quotient. If viewed objectively, most of us can rate a list of events in order of the amount of happiness they would bring the average person. Good is good, bad is bad, that sort of thing.

Let’s say I gave you three events and asked you to rate them in order of least-happiness-inducing to most-happiness-inducing — 1 being the lowest and 3 being the highest. If those three events were a funeral, getting a new job, and your own marriage, most people would rank these 1, 2, and 3 respectively.

This is all well and good, but when it comes to our own lives, we can’t be objective.

If we all have a happiness scale of -10 to 10, my -10 is not going to be the same as your -10, and your 10 is not going to be the same as my 10.

My friend is in a different stage of her life than I am. What she expects to get from her life is different from what I expect to get from my life. This is why not getting her house is a -10 on her scale — she expects that she should be able to buy a house based on where she is in her life. I can’t relate because putting an offer on house is so far beyond my scale right now, and therefore I have no expectations about it.

When I thought about it a little further, I realized that not only is my scale different from my friend’s scale, but my scale is different from my own scale of even a few months ago.

Because my life is changing, my scale is being re-calibrated based on my new circumstances and the new expectations that arise from those circumstances.

OK, we’re almost to the part where I relate this to your own home business.

In a previous life, I worked at a job where I had to deal with a lot of red tape. This used to really piss me off, especially when I kept seeing commercials for my company on TV talking about our wonderful customer service.

A -10 day at work for me was any day where my interactions with a client were hampered by red tape. Then Naomi came up with the brilliance which is IttyBiz and I quit to work with her. One of the things I clung to was with our own business, we make the decisions. No more red tape.

When I did that, my expectations about my new job role changed. I no longer expected to have to deal with red tape, and at that moment my happiness scale re-calibrated. My old concept of -10 was deleted. But while the events on your scale may change, the scale itself never does.

The scale doesn’t change.

You always have to have a -10 and a +10 and they always feel the same. You feel just as frustrated or elated at -10 or +10, only the events and your own expectations have changed.

A few months ago I was getting disappointed with working from home because it felt like it hadn’t made me any happier. I was thinking about going back to work. Guess where I was going to apply first? You got it, my old red-tape job. Naomi was able to remind me of all the reasons I wanted to leave that job, and finally I realized that I did not want to go back. I was indeed happier working from home.

The moral of the story? Any given day can be a -10 or a +10 or even a 0 or a 3 or a -2. But…

Just because you’re having a -10 day doesn’t mean you’ve made a bad choice in your life.

Some days working from home will seem like the best decision you ever made. Some days you will wonder whatever possessed you to leave the security of a 9-5 job. Once you realize that you will always have days like this — no matter what you’re doing — it’s easier to look at your life as a whole and see that it’s not as bad as you might think.

The key is not “how do I feel today?”, but “how have I been feeling since I made a change in my life?”

The secondary moral of the story (can a story have more than one moral?) is to remember that everyone has a scale, and everyone feels their -10 or +10 just as intensely as you do. Just because I may wish I had my friend’s problem doesn’t mean she’s not deeply affected by it.

So what can you do to help keep some perspective?

One little thing I’ve found that works for me is to schedule the tasks I most enjoy doing for the end of my work day. I can have a pretty good day, but if the last hour is shit then I think I had a shitty day. Ending on a positive note can turn a bad day into a good one. (Charlie from Productive Flourishing made a similar point here.)

Secondly, keep a journal. Not a “I had tuna fish on rye but we ran out of light mayonnaise” journal, just a simple little journal of how things went. This helped me when I was thinking about rejoining the rat race.

I was able to go back and read about how badly some of those days at the old job made me feel. After time and changed expectations, those bad feelings lost their edge. When I realized that some days I felt as bad as I did today, I was able to remember that the old job wasn’t as great as nostalgia would have me believe.

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, try to get rid of your expectations. I don’t really follow Buddhism but Naomi tells me this is like losing your attachments. If you don’t wake up each day expecting the day to turn out a certain way then you’re less likely to be disappointed.

Less disappointments mean more happiness.

I’m sure this is not groundbreaking stuff, and it may not even be all that original. But I was at a point in our home business where I was wondering if this was really for me, and what I came up with on my own helped me get through it. As always, if you have any thoughts on how to cope with indecision or unhappiness, please let me know, I’d love to hear them.

Photocredit: netsrot

***

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By Jamie Dunford - Apr 17, 2008 in Home Business Psychology - 33 Comments
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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.

Now, a lot of people think that owning a job is stupid. They think it’s not entrepreneurial. They think it’s not serious. They think it’s a recipe for failure. Other people think that they don’t want to be the next Michael Dell, they just want to make some money while staying home with their kids. Generally, I’m in group 2, but sometimes that changes and I think my job is totally fucking retarded.

Here’s the thing about jobs, though. Sometimes they suck.

I left high school at 16. Tomorrow I will be 27. I’ve had a lot of jobs, most of which I’ve hated. I won’t go into eyeball numbing detail, but the takeaway point here is that I have entitlement issues, problems with authority, and what some believe to be a mental illness. I am essentially unemployable, so I don’t go out to work anymore. Instead, I stay here and work in my own little job that I made for myself.

I repeat: Here’s the thing about jobs, though. Sometimes they suck.

Sometimes you hate your clients and sometimes you think what you do for a living is stupid. If you’re a writer, you think that you quite simply do not have it in you to string two more words together. If you’re a marketer, you have days when you know you are taking someone’s money to get people to their website, even though you know those people will just leave again because the product sucks and you feel awful about it.

If you’re in any business, there are times when you’re horribly, horribly bored and wonder if this — whatever this is for you — is what you’re doomed to do every day for the rest of your life. (At least in a day job there’s a hope you might get promoted or transferred to another department. At home you are the other department.)

“Thank you, Naomi,” you say. “That was incredibly depressing. What’s your big advice?”

Wait and watch.

Enter rambling analogy.

You know those times when some huge decision has to be made, and we call it coming to a crossroads? It’s an apt metaphor, but it doesn’t tell the whole story.

When we think of a crossroads, we think of a Y shape… you are going along your merry way and then for whatever reason you can’t stay on your road anymore. You have a choice. You can go in one direction that is different from the one you’re going now, or you can go in another direction that is also different than the one you’re going now.

The whole story is that we come to many, many crossroads in our life but we don’t notice them or make a big deal of them because most of them aren’t Y shaped. They’re kind of… F shaped. Or E shaped. You can keep going the way you’re going, or you can turn and go off in a new direction. The chances to do this come up a lot, but you don’t usually notice them because there’s nothing wrong with the path that you’re on — you’re not forced to leave it — and it therefore doesn’t occur to you to get off the path. Kind of like a bunch of Es in a row, on and on and on, until you hit a Y.

When you find yourself hating your job, here’s your 2-step plan.

1. Watch for Es.

Slow down, or stop if you have to. Ain’t no point in barrelling head-first down a path you might soon be getting off anyway. Look around you. Look at the little paths you’ve been encountering, analyze their terrain, see if it’s better or worse or basically the same as the one you’re on.

2. Wait.

Something will happen. Sometimes it will be a little thing and sometimes it will be a big thing. Sometimes it will be a bunch of little things. Sometimes it will be a combination. But mark my words, something’s gonna happen. It’s a law of the universe — shit keeps going on, even if you’re not involved.

When your something happens, take it as new data, and make your decision from there. You may decide that yes, you really do hate your job and you’re going back to school to become a speech language pathologist. You may decide that you won’t. (More likely the latter… speech language pathologist is fairly specific and good God, do you know how much school it takes to do that job?)

Here’s my something:

While I’m pretty happy with my job and my income, being pregnant makes me feel incredibly sorry for myself. I was already wondering if this was all there was… if constantly canvassing for the next gig and the gig after that and the gig after that was going to be my life until I retired or I sold a bestselling novel and could retire to my den eating bonbons and wearing a pink fluffy boa. Then I got the flu, which is world renowned for making you feel like shit about yourself and your life.

Monday morning, when Jamie and Jack were both solidly in the throes of illness, I had to go to the pharmacy. Normally I would walk but because of the aforementioned sickness, I decided to take the bus. I threw on the nearest and least disgusting clothes I could find (hint: they didn’t belong to me), and got ready to get on the bus.

If you ever want to see how the other half lives, get on the downtown bus at 8 o’clock on a Monday morning.

Everyone looked so DEPRESSED. They, like the rest of the Western hemisphere, were all sick as well, but they didn’t have the luxury of leaving the house looking like a slob. They were on their way to their miserable jobs feeling like shit and knowing they couldn’t take a sick day or they might get fired. The total misery of the people on that bus cannot be understated. I looked around and went, “MAN, I’m glad I’m not them.”

Anyway, I went to the pharmacy and did my crap and came home to three emails from complete strangers. Here are excerpts:

“In Yahoo, I entered “What to do when you feel like a failure” and found your post “What to do when you feel like a raging failure.” I can hardly believe it, but I found some energy to keep going.”

“I’m asking you because you’re honest and abrupt and swear with abandon. You’re bodacious and reading your posts makes me feel like a rockstar…all confident and flagrant and whatnot… Thanks, whether you get to this or not…your blog was a blessing today.”

It could have gone the other way. I could have come home to hate mail — I certainly have in the past — and come to an entirely different conclusion. It really doesn’t matter either way. But if you hate your job and don’t know whether to keep going, just wait. The universe will tell you, either way.

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By Naomi Dunford - Mar 7, 2008 in Home Business Psychology - 42 Comments
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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.”

I don’t do Moleskines, but I do spend a shocking amount of money on cheese. My father nearly wept when he saw the price of the bottle of wine Jamie bought for our anniversary. My child’s bed is the Laura Ashley version of a standard Pack ‘n’ Play with no beneficial features other than prettier fabric and rounded edges and a price tag that came in at around $100 more. I have a fountain pen that cost more than a month’s rent in many perfectly liveable countries. I see nothing wrong with buying a Kate Spade purse and if you don’t already know what that costs, don’t go and look. I just don’t want a Moleskine.

When you have a home business, you get a lot of benefits, but you give up on a lot as well. I, for one, miss Starbucks. Yes, I could still go, but part of the joy of Starbucks was the guilty pleasure, the knowledge that I was taking an extra-long coffee break, the feeling cooler than the other losers who brought taupe office coffee into meetings. You might miss out on the nice clothes or the pints with the lads or the catered lunches. You might miss shopping on your lunch hour or, my mother’s favorite, The Body Shop at the tube station.

Whether you work outside the home or from the home or don’t work at all, if you’re a student or just an all-around deadbeat, you need to do what gets you through the day. If you have a pen that rocks your world and makes you feel like F. Scott Fitzgerald when you write with it, there’s nothing wrong with that. If you want a $400 cleaver because it makes julienning your kale an unknowable delight, chop forth, Nigella! You’re not being any more pretentious than anybody else.

I know a woman who lives in my building who has one child and one husband. She stays home with the baby and he walks to work. We have a library, grocery store, natural food store, two bookstores, three coffee shops and two bars within a five-minute walk from our apartment building. She owns a $30,000 car. Why? Does she go anywhere? No, other than the grocery store and the library and the coffee shop. Personally, I think that’s a hell of a lot more pretentious than a $15 notebook but it’s none of my goddamn business.

Make your choices, do what you can to make your life more pleasant and comfortable and fun, and don’t let anybody tell you you’re being pretentious. Except me. I will tell you you’re being pretentious, but that’s because snarkiness is my angle and if I didn’t talk shit people would think I’m ill.

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Feb 7, 2008 in Home Business Psychology - 44 Comments
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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.

Jack is covered in a rash from ankle to neck and scratches himself every hour of the day and night. My bathtub is full of baby sleepers and cold water where I tried, and failed, to get the blood out of his clothes. He is crying in his room and Jamie is trying to comfort him — nothing I was doing was helping and I am now under my covers sporting silent headphones, trying to drown out the noise so I can cry and type in peace. I fear he either has or will shortly get an infection from the cuts that don’t heal, and all the doctor does is tell us to try Aveeno. Because I guess we never thought of that.

I missed a client call. I want to reschedule but everything is so up in the air, I don’t even know when to tell them. I feel horrible, guilt-ridden and sick. I feel like I’m drowning. I feel like my home business, doing what I love, is a fabulous sparkly present and I’m stomping on it daily. I feel like every time I fuck something up, little bits of sparkle wash down the drain and soon I will be left with nothing. I don’t know how in the hell I’m ever going to deliver on all of the promises I’ve made — promises I want to keep, promises I had every intention of keeping, promises that I didn’t think would be a problem.

There is no how-to in this post. I do not know how to dig my way out of this. Sometimes when something is wrong, it’s helpful to pretend that the problem belongs to someone else and you can think of the advice you’d give them. Unfortunately, under these circumstances, my advice would be trite and ridiculous. I would tell people to plug away, item by item, list by list, until they had fought their way out. I think we all know that’s delightful advice in a vacuum, but it doesn’t account for emotional states that include bursting into tears watching Ellen give away $100 gift cards to Trader Joe’s. Overwhelm does not occur in a vacuum and vacuum advice doesn’t help worth a damn.

The only thing I really hope to accomplish with this post is this: If you feel shitty, you’re not alone. If you feel like, now that you’ve got your itty bitty business off the ground, you’re furious with yourself for not skipping with glee every moment, it’s not just you. If you feel like nobody on the goddamn planet understands what you’re going through, at least I do. If you feel like, now that you’re at home full time, you should provide your children with home-cooked meals and wash the sheets every other day and only show quality, commercial-free programming on your television and have sex with your husband six nights a week and have a floor that’s more carpet than ground-up-Cheerio, you’re not the only one.

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Jan 31, 2008 in Home Business Psychology - 79 Comments
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Somebody (Tim Ferris? Gandhi? Princess Di?) once said that if you’re not offending anybody, you’re doing it wrong. You’ll be happy to know, I’m clearly doing it right.

When I clicked “Publish” on my most recent post, I can honestly say I didn’t know people would be so bothered. I had no less than five snarky emails in my inbox before the damn post hit my Bloglines. (Yes, I subscribe to my own feed.) Seriously, people were mad. Really mad. People were mad at my word use, people were mad that I called them cocky, people did not dig it. (For those of you who did like it and commented, thank you. That was very nice of you.)

Anyway, somebody else (Chuck Norris? Paris Hilton? The Will It Blend guy?) said the following, and I think you’ll agree that it deserves some funky red type.

The absence of fear is not courage. The absence of fear is mental illness.

When I got those emails, I was not exactly delighted. (OK, the exhibitionist part of me was a little bit delighted.) Am I afraid that no-one will come to my blog? That people will stop coming? That I won’t meet the goals I’ve stated quite publicly to people I don’t like and who will gleefully revel in my failure?

Of course I am. But I can’t let that water me down. I can’t let that fear dominate my actions. I can’t let myself become one of those bloggers who just rehashes everybody else’s crap.

I have to hang out, being afraid, and going about my business anyway.

I’d love to make this into a handy bulleted list with lots of outgoing link love. Then everyone could bookmark it and Stumble it and Digg it and I could be the linkbait queen of the world.

Sadly, I can’t.

I can tell you what I know about fear, though. It sucks. A lot. It can paralyze you and sicken you and leave you cold and lonely. I got pregnant at 17 with a man who wasn’t exactly my soul mate. I dropped out of college and people told me I would never make anything of myself. I have been on welfare. And I run my own home business.

This is scary shit, people.

So here’s my not-very-linear advice on fear.

First, acknowledge it. Get to know it. The worst thing to do with fear is pretend it’s not there. You’re not fooling anyone, least of all fear itself, and by denying its existence you just look like an idiot. Get to the root of your fear. Analyze where it comes from. Find out what you’re really afraid of.

If you think you’re afraid your business will fail, you’re not. You might be afraid of poverty, of humiliation, of never finding happiness, but you’re not afraid your business will fail. Figure out what the problem really is and stop pretending the Big White Elephant of Fear hasn’t taken up residence in the corner of your home office.

For myself, I used to be almost constantly afraid. It’s gotten better, but here are some things that are still on the list:

I’m afraid if I move to the country, I will become isolated. I’m afraid that if I’m unhappy there, that will mean I’m vacuous and shallow.

I’m afraid that if we move to the city, I will be happy and Jamie will not. I’m afraid I won’t be able to enjoy it because of the guilt.

I’m afraid of finding out five years from now that we should have had more kids. I’m much more afraid of actually having more kids.

I’m afraid that now that I’m living my dream, I will be struck by a fatal illness and not live to enjoy it. (The dream, not the fatal illness.) I’m afraid that if I tell anyone that fear, then I will jinx myself and the fear will come true.

I’m afraid that all of my gigs will fall through at the same time and Jamie and I will have to go back to working for the man.

I’m afraid people will decide that given my background (see: pregnant teenager, college dropout) I have no business calling myself an authority on anything.

I’m afraid my oldest son will stay a Mormon, serve a mission, and be brainwashed to hate me.

I’m afraid if I rest, I will fail.

Guess what, folks. Fear is normal.

As a bloggers, artists, writers, business owners, we are afraid. Trying to avoid fear, circumvent fear, or remove fear is an act of futility. Fear will not go away.

Live with fear, do your thing anyway.

But before you do that, please subscribe to my feed.

By Naomi Dunford - Nov 10, 2007 in Home Business Psychology - 119 Comments
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For reasons that will soon become evident, I have chosen not to run a photo with this post.

Cocky - adjective
a. arrogant; pertly self-assertive; conceited

Balls, Slang: Vulgar.
a. boldness, courage, brassness

Time for a quick self-assessment quiz.

Please answer the following multiple-choice question, identifying the letter that most accurately represents your response.

Someone calls you cocky.

A.) I’m not cocky, I’m confident.
B.) Anything else, including, but not limited to: blushing, lame and self-deprecating jokes, stunned silence, and wild laughter at the sheer ridiculousness of the implication.

If you answered A, yes, you are cocky. I can’t help you. Find another blog. Good night and good luck.

If you answered B, you are a part of the 97.4% of the population who think they suck. Welcome. Enjoy your stay.

Thank you, Naomi. That was very funny and succinct. Why do I care?

Uncocky people don’t like cocky people. This is likely because you are both jealous of them and repulsed by them at the same time. They represent both what you hate and what you aspire to be and have. You want their confidence, their swagger. You also want their jobs. But how do you get what they have without turning the asses that they are?

You need balls.

Having balls is an unappreciated strength. Having balls can open doors and create opportunities like you could never imagine. Having balls will change your life.

There is a person I know very well. He looks a lot like my husband. He is taking something related to computers in school. The school sucks. They are not providing the education he paid for. This is a concern.

One of the classes he’s taking has to do with databases. His teacher, hereafter referred to as “Database Dude”, is not actually a teacher but a database administrator at a very big company nearby. He didn’t think it was necessary to provide his students with a textbook or tutoring or even open office hours. He comes, he babbles, he leaves.

This person who looks like my husband is concerned because many people are failing this class and he doesn’t want to be one of them. Database Dude is being unhelpful, as is the college’s administration. The person who looks like my husband does not know what to do.

His class is divided into three types of people.

Group One does not worry because they are certain they will be fine. They are smart and if they fail this course, f*ck the college, they don’t care.

Group Two is generally hysterical. “OhmygodwhatamIgoingtodo?” whines Group Two. “I’mgoingtofailandIwon’tgetmydegree! ThenI’llnevergetajob! I’llnevergetlaidagain!”

Group Three consists of one man, the one who looks like my husband. He’s calling in favors from every nerd he knows. He’s asking his brother-in-law, his neighbor, some guy his wife met on the internet - everybody. He’s going to figure this out if it kills him. He’s close to knowing more about databases than Database Dude.

Pretend you’re in this situation. You want to be in Group Three.

Cocky people are in Group One. Wimpy people are in Group Two. People with balls are in Group Three.

I’m not going to give you a nice, handy list of ways to get balls, but you need them to run a home business. Balls is not something you can Google. (Well, you could, but I’m guessing you wouldn’t get the kind of results you were looking for.) You just need to be conscious of balls. You need to channel balls. You need to look your life in the eye and say, “I have balls.” (This is very different from looking your life in the balls and saying, “I have eyes.”)

Christine at Self Made Chick has a post called The Closed Mouth Doesn’t Get Fed (or something like that). When I read it, I was thinking of writing a post about asking for what you want, but I’ve decided not to bother. Hers is better. This is a tremendous tutorial on one of the most important aspects of balls. Please go and read it. Seriously, this is one of the most important things you can do for your career.

When you’re done, can someone figure out how to get a keyword density on how many times I’ve said “sucks,” “cocky”, “balls”, and “ass” in this post?

And they ask me why I didn’t run a picture.

Liked it? Subscribe to the feed. Didn’t like it? Subscribe anyway. How else are you going to know when I post so you can make nasty comments?

***

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By Naomi Dunford - Nov 8, 2007 in Home Business Psychology
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(This is Jack, expressing his serious reservations about a Jolly Jumper. He was right to be concerned — they were recalled about a week after this photograph was taken. See? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.)

Moving on.

Working from home makes you crazy. If you have a blog with subscribers, you’ll know that this weekend, Feedburner messed up. It looks like they stopped aggregating Google feed readers, meaning that everyone’s subscriber count went down 30-70%. Darren at Problogger had a drop from 30,000 to 14,000. Crazy things, people.

Of course, much of the blogosphere was abuzz about this. (Hey! Spell check didn’t catch “abuzz”! Is that a real word?) Personally, my subscribers dropped 64%. What follows would make a good Moral Of The Story post, but I just did one. You should check it out. You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. (Okay, you’ll laugh. I’ll cry.)

Anyway, back to Feedburner.

If you’ve been paying attention, which I don’t recommend, you’ll know that the Great Subscriber Crash of ’07 took place about eight hours after I first used the word “slut” on my blog. Imagine what went through my head. No, don’t bother. I’ll tell you.

“Do you think it’s because I said ‘slut’? Are people really that conservative? Maybe I should tone it down a bit. But if I tone it down a bit, I won’t be being myself. I don’t want subscribers who don’t like me for who I am. Then again, I want to write a book. I want people to buy it. I don’t care who they are. Am I pissing off the Bible belters? Should I blog about this? It would be a cool story. But do I really want people to know I lost all those subscribers? What if it’s like the Broken Window Syndrome? What if the rest of them find out the first crop left and then they leave too?”

Actually, to be honest, that didn’t go through my head. It went through my mouth, into my poor husband’s ears. And of course, today everything is fine.

Here’s my theory.

When you work in an office or a hospital or on a construction site, you are surrounded by other people who give you perspective. If you’re freaking out about something, chances are someone has been there, done that. There’s always going to be a full spectrum of people with various theories and points of view. You can hang out and gossip until you know the facts.

(This is a bonus, barely relevant picture of my oldest son, Michael. We don’t put a lot of pictures of him up because of the whole pedophile thing. Anyway, here he is pointing out the ass end of a hedgehog. You may want to rethink your big plan of homeschooling. That makes you crazy, too.)

When you have a home business, there’s no-one to gossip with. There’s no-one to bounce your ideas off. There’s no-one to calm you down. All you’ve got is you and your paranoid delusional stream of consciousness.

So what’s the solution, Miss Whiny Pants?

Get a life, even if it’s just a virtual one. Find people to hang out with, even if it’s just over email. Shane IMed me yesterday about the subscriber issue and I’d already heard about it. I told him what was going on and all was well. Shane is smarter than I am. He got off his ass instead of sitting around freaking like a spaz. I’m sure his wife, Julie, is happier with him than Jamie is with me right now.

Bonus Moral of the Story: It’s Not All About You. Or Me.

The whole internet isn’t going to crash just because I said “slut”. Oh, and by the way? Slut slut slut slut slut slut slut slut slut.

Slut.

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By Naomi Dunford - Nov 5, 2007 in Home Business Psychology
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Alright, people. This is killing me. Over at Lindsay’s blog, he has a little video. You’re supposed to look at it and the way you see it is an indication of whether you’re right brained or left-brained. The whole left brain vs. right brain thing is pretty important to your home business, so this would be a handy thing to know.

Click here. I HAVE to know. Which do you see?

Jamie swears on whatever one swears on about very important things that he sees it the left brained way. I think he’s lying to screw with me because it’s TOTALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

Seriously, go. Send it to your coworkers, your mom, your neighbor. It’s nuts. Please leave your answer in the comments. I’m dying, here.

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By Naomi Dunford - Nov 5, 2007 in Home Business Psychology - 29 Comments
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