A few weeks before Flash on the Beach I quit my job. I didn't go postal or anything; I've been working towards this for a while, but the timing was quite prescient. A recurring theme of this years conference was making time for personal projects. The irony of not having time to work on a project about time isn't lost on me. Digging the escape tunnel kept me pretty busy but all that preparation was worth it.
I work for myself now, under the guise of Phi Digital. In fact I'm doing pretty much what I used to do for my previous employer, only without the commute, or the employer. I'm working for friends and ex-clients and all of it from my home-office on the coast. The biggest difference has been the lifestyle shift from London agencies to one man band. I run the business from a laptop, from anywhere. I spec the projects and the tools, and every now and then I say no. What's not to like?
Well, the dark side is tax returns, marketing, billing, project management, reception and everything else that comes with running a company. Much of that time is un-billable. Luckily the web is full of entrepreneurial services for the self employed. There's BaseCamp for managing projects, my accounts are with Crunch and time tracking goes on Freckle. There's still plenty of company setup to do (like actually build the website!) but the main thing is I have work on the books into next year. When things settle down a bit I'll be revisiting the Computus Engine properly. I've kept the journal going over the last few months but development ground to a halt while I set up the business. Now I'm running the show I'm going to have more time, right?
