Life is good

I was having lunch with a fellow young entrepreneur yesterday and we spent quite a bit of time discussing our choice to work for ourselves. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I am happier and less stressed than at any time in my life. In college, I was stressed out (although I shouldn't have been) about getting good grades and doing a bunch of internships and getting a great job when I graduated. I also was miserable at times because many of the classes that I "needed" to get A's in were completely pointless in my mind.

In the working world, everyone seems more stressed about keeping their job than they do about helping the company. Everyone wants to position themselves for a raise, or a good performance review, or a promotion two years down the road. It's an insanely stressful environment that includes a ton of backstabbing, people forming alliances with each other, and people completely becoming a facade to get what they want. It sucks, and it's hard not to get caught up in. I tried to stay out of that crap, but you tend to get sucked in whether you want to or not...and needless to say it made work suck.

Working for myself - my customers write my performance reviews, I control my raises, and if I don't get where I want to, the only one I can blame is myself. There's no boss to blame and no corporate conspiracy. I might be busier than ever, but I'm ultimately so much happier because I don't have to deal with all of that junk. Sometimes I don't take enough time to think about how good things really are. Overall, life is pretty damn good.