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The realisation that… I am currently my own boss!

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Towards the end of my first week, something slowly dawns on me. Not as quick as a sunrise, and not as slow as a westerner trying to pronounce ‘“ผู้ว่าราชการจังหวัด” (phoo-waa-raat-cha-kaan-jang-wat)’*, but more like a butterfly unfolding and pushing its way out of a cocoon. 

I am my own boss. Certain expletives come to my mind. 
 
There is no-one to account to for the amount of work I do or don’t do each day. If I do or don’t achieve the goals I set for myself, no-one cares. 
 
Except me of course. And in this situation, that’s it. Me. Oh dear.
 
I have been relatively lucky in most of my employment experiences, I have worked essentially independently, reporting as required (and in my case this was always proactive reporting by me and rarely requested reporting). I like to initiate and run with ideas and projects and achieve good outcomes for the organisation I am working for. And even earlier on in my career when I worked as a lawyer I worked very independently, reporting essentially to dictated deadlines set by legal processes.
 
My current favourite outfit!



So whilst this new endeavour does not feel wholly out of my ordinary, it is nevertheless different. Firstly, I am not getting paid by anyone. Secondly, no one would try to call me if I stayed in bed and watched movies all day. Thirdly, no one cares if I decide to rock up to my office in half length bright pink Thai pants!









So since I am my own boss, I guess there are some questions that might be useful for me to answer:

  1. Do I need to structure my work or life differently to achieve my writing goals?    Well the life part is sorted. I have come to a quiet part of an island so that I can focus almost exclusively on writing. My work, well yes, that needs structure.
  2. What sort of boss will I be to myself? Hhhhmmmm
  3. What workplace culture do I want to establish for myself? That is somewhat taken care of with the happy relaxed vibe of where I am living and working. I do focused work and also spend time with happy people here. The thing I need to monitor is my ‘open door’ policy (discussed below).

These questions began to be answered in my second week of writing. Generally my first and second weeks of writing were filled with flow moments and distractions. The flow moments were great, but the distractions, were well, annoying. Let me explain.
 

First, I distract myself with food (a great go to throughout my life and I happen to always choose places to hang out that have great quality, delicious food. Life is too short to eat crap food, and when there’s good stuff around, I’ll eat a lot of it!).


Secondly I distract myself through talking to people. I know myself pretty well, so I do not intentionally talk to anyone here. At all. I am a super friendly talkative listener most of the time, but not here. I look at my computer and type at most times throughout the day, I give friendly smiles and warm hellos, but that’s it. 
 
The problem is that people want to talk to me. And so I let them in. I get into Sunni listening, and at times, helping mode and my focus is with that person and in that conversation and that’s it. That is my complete focus at that moment. Potentially hours can go by. Don’t get me wrong, its lovely. It really is. I adore listening, learning and sharing. But its a distraction from why I’m here.
 
The third way I distract myself is the big one, Facecrack. I pretend I’m connecting with people and catching up on their lives, but its pure distraction. So. much. time. can be spent on Facecrack. And emailing. 
 
 

Some somewhat strategies

 
I thought of implementing a no FB strategy during my writing day, checking FB only over breakfast and at night. I think this could potentially work. So I trial it. 
 
I remind myself at my office, ‘Right Sunni, no Facecrack now, but you can check it later’. I start writing. It may be an hour later, or an hour and a half and I see a FB message box crop up saying I have a message from this or that person. I have to check it out immediately. Like my life depends on it. Which obviously, it does.
 
Amazing hummus & shakata dip!

Other times I think, ok, its lunch time, I can just go and have a little look. Half an hour later I wake up, wondering what’s just happened.

 
And there are times where I’m writing and think, I’ll I just have to check something out about that on the net…. all of a sudden, and I don’t know how it happens, but I am on Facebook. Just like that.

And then I have forgotten what took me to look at the web in the first place.
 
 
I also consider only doing blog writing at night. This works some nights, but other nights I just want to tune out and do other things. 
 
 

How I generally work

 
I am particularly focused and hard working employee when I am working for someone else. I achieve results. And when I am managing others, I am present, perceptive, supportive, development focused, encouraging and fun. 
 
Me busily working at my office!

But now I am managing myself exclusively. And its different. I decide in my first weeks here not to create strict plans for my day. When I am working for an organisation, I plan. I love plans, reviewing them and ensuring results happen.

 
I’ve felt comfortable not creating strict plans for my day here because I know my goals for being here are strong. 
 
And I want to enjoy a lifestyle that isn’t as strict as being at an office by 9am everyday. So I don’t set my alarm and I allow my body to wake up when it needs to. Most days that is around 7am. To my surprise one day I awoke at 10 (shocking, I know)!
 

Those voices

 
But then those voices start to infiltrate my thinking. You know the ones, the ones that say I am not achieving as much as I should. Should. Such an interesting word. Denotes obligation. But who am I obliged to here?
 
No-one but me. I am expecting a lot of myself. Knowing my tendencies for taking on too much or wanting to do what no person could possibly do by themselves, I have to manage my expectations of me. Of course my wild ideas of finishing within one month is fast fading, realising that writing a book takes time, some people take years, one of the longest books ever written took 16 years to write. Don’t worry, I would never want to do that to anyone, let alone myself!
 
I am now expecting I’ll need to take the whole length of my Thai tourist visa, and that is okay with me (living on a gorgeous Thai island with great food, massages, people, well, it just might be bearable).
 
Writing a book is different to other writing I’ve done. Its different to writing policy or developing strategic frameworks. They are much shorter tasks. Even ones that I have developed over a year with extensive community consultations. They seem like more discreet processes.
 
Banana and coconut milk breakfast! Yummy!


My mind continues to think of that push / relax mode of working and being here and the very different advice from two of my friends: ‘Keep the focus’ and ‘You can’t push creativity’ in my previous blog. And I deviate between them on a two hourly basis!





So since I am now my own boss, I decide to update my LinkedIn profile.
 
I choose an appropriately wanky title:
 
‘Senior Writer & Developer’ at Sunni Dawson. 
 

 

I giggled when I wrote this. And I am still giggling now. 
 
 

*Means pprovincial governor in Thai

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