I signed a contract on Friday. I was so excited and happy! Starting your own business isn’t easy and every contract, big or small matters. This one was small, but still a contract.
Today is Monday and I’m staring at a list of 47 things I need to do and can’t start a single one of them.
This is week 5 after leaving corporate and while I’m seeing progress, I’m stuck in paralysis. And I wasn’t prepared for this. I didn’t expect that a milestone would land, I’d feel excited for 48 hours and then I’d sit down at my desk and the momentum would be just gone. I thought signing something would make the next steps obvious, but it doesn’t. It just gives me more pressure to figure out which of the 47 things actually matter most.
My list has everything on it. Admin. Lead generation. Outreach. A podcast I’m recording this week. A call with a fractional community I’m part of. A company that reached out to hear about my services, which is exciting, and also means I have to prepare something, which goes on the list.
Somehow none of it has a natural starting point, and it’s probably because there is way too many things to do.
What I’ve learned in five weeks is that leaving corporate doesn’t just change your job. It removes the scaffolding that told you what to do first. In a big company there’s always a meeting that anchors your Monday, a team that creates some external pull, a calendar that makes decisions for you whether you like it or not. When it’s gone, the freedom you wanted turns out to require a kind of self-direction that nobody actually practises inside an organisation.
I’m figuring it out. Slowly and in no particular order.
This week also includes other things like a goodbye dinner with my old Vestas team, and Roskilde festival, because apparently week 5 is the week I panic about 47 things, and still manage to go to a music festival.
More next week. I'm heading to Sweden with my kids for the holidays, and yes, I'll be working in the margins. Week 6 reporting from somewhere in Sweden.
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