Week One out of a job but not out of work

It’s 6pm and I’m still fervently working away, it’s been an upside down week with flat sorting in the day and working on the night.

After selling the bed, last night, my new “office” looked like this:

We still have to find somewhere in amongst all of this to sleep.

This morning I attended my first LikeMind meeting in Brighton. I was encouraged with how friendly and surprisingly chipper everyone seemed to be for an early Friday morning, and there was no awkwardness I have come to expect from rigid networking events. It was causal, enjoyable and, as I left with business cards and notes of things to look up, incredibly productive.

People seemed to be genuinely interested in other people’s ventures rather than looking for ways to advance their own interests through personal contacts, though I am sure there are many profitable collaborations through such groups as LikeMind.

I’ve no doubt I’m still in the honeymoon period of just leaving my job, but from talking to people who were carving out careers from their passions it was reassuring that many of them were still excited by what they did and I found it difficult to find the traces of cynicism I have found in some of my previous positions from people desperately unhappy by their jobs. It was refreshing and inspiring.

One of my fears about working for myself, aside from myself or my boyfriend ending up in a shallow grave, was the isolation from not working alongside people day in day out, but today’s meeting seemed to be a springboard to a whole host of other events and everyone was keen to promote an event they had been to or heard about.

In fact, there is one this evening, that was recommended to me which is for Skiff, a co-working office space and unfortunately the free tickets had already been sold.

I know networking is only a small aspect of working for yourself, but I enjoyed myself. Today was the first time I was introduced to moo.com for mini business cards and I can’t wait to design and order my own! They were the coolest must have accessory for creative entrepreneurs (that and a battered Moleskine notebook!)