That Monday Morning Feeling

It's a chilly, rather bleak Monday morning. There's a little sleet in the air and there's work to do. Not only that, but the bin needs putting out, the traffic's horrendous and we've a couple of tricky decisions to make.

Don't you hate Mondays?

Actually, I don't. Now the school run is done, neither of us has to go out again. The work is a couple of letters to finish - one of those a sales letter for ourselves - and the tricky decision is if and when to go to the gym this morning.

There will be other work today, but it's work we choose to do. There's a loose timetable for much of the day, but only the children's comings and goings are really dictated by the clock. Any appointments we make will be at times that suit us. We decide what work to pursue and what to accept and, crucially, what to decline and how much to charge.

To think I could have been in and out of the office this morning, keeping track of the rain, sleet and snow, and getting cold and wet each time. Dictated to by the clock and the vagaries of the English climate, I would have had about as much self-determination as a milking cow and, I often felt, only a little more mental stimulation.

No more.

Giving up the day job has meant surrendering a regular monthly salary in exchange for an irregular income that promises to be much larger, and giving up a large chunk of my eventual pension in exchange for a private income that ought to out-weigh it many times over.

It's all just so much less predictable, and you might say unreliable, but I'll take my chances.

Roy Everitt, Writing For Results