Posted on
12 June 2009, under
Money & Legal; More Money & Legal articles...
Leon Quinn
Reverb Studios
DADpreneur: Leon Quinn / Reverb Studios
I’ve been lucky enough to be able to work from home now for about 4 years. I started my small Multimedia and Website Design Company not long after I escaped from Dublin and moved to the Lovely Leitrim wilderness. I kinda had no choice but to start something myself as there weren’t many jobs in my electronics sector in or around Leitrim and I was damned if I was going to drive miles every day. I approached the local enterprise board with a very vague idea for some kind of Online Digital Recording Studio that even I didn’t understand fully so the mentor that was assigned to me must have been very confused!
With the help of the enterprise board I was able to focus my idea, write a detailed business plan, get a grant for some equipment and get in touch with some excellent contacts. The business has grown slowly but steadily ever since and I currently work about 10/12 hours a day, 5 days a week from a rented house dining room in the middle of the beautiful Leitrim. Oh and I should also mention that my job is my hobby, always has been and always will be. If I suddenly stopped getting paid tomorrow, I’d probably still mess with computers and websites!
So my job is pretty ideal right? Who wouldn’t like to work for themselves from their own home at a job that only requires moving fingers and is their hobby? Well it is ideal but there are one or 2 problems. Firstly, there are distractions. Everything from TV, visitors and chores to a partner jealous of my computer and the time I dedicate to it. Giving the pc a girl’s name (GiGi cause it has a Gigabyte motherboard!) probably didn’t help there! Secondly, there has been a new and massive distraction lately in the form of our first baby, Hanne.
Now Hanne is a special girl having taken 6 years or so to arrive on the planet due to infertility so we are enjoying every minute of her but boy are we finding out how demanding a new baby can be! Hanne is actually a very good baby, sleeps 'most' of the night (and day for that matter) and is not cranky at all. She’s quite laid back like her parents! However, like any baby she needs constant attention to make sure she’s not puked in her sleep or dirtied herself or that she has attention and stimulation on the rare occasions that she is awake. She is also massively hungry ALL the time and the whole feeding ritual takes forever, from warming the bottle properly to feeding, burping, cleaning up sick, changing nappies and settling baby down again. It takes about one to two hours each time and she feeds about five or six times a day so that’s a lot of time used up.
My partner has obviously been on (unpaid) maternity leave from her casual job and has time to dedicate to Hanne while I work to support us all in the traditional manly way but it bothers me that we’ve fallen into the clichéd pattern of the man working and the woman left holding the baby. I had hoped to avoid this and get stuck in to fatherhood as I’m never one to follow trends. I also thought working from home would make it easy for me to see more of Hanne but unfortunately Hanne’s arrival coincided almost exactly (very weird!) with a huge increase in business for me.
From early January 2009, (Hanne’s birthday was Jan 13th) I’ve been inundated with emails and calls re my web design service. Several local web design companies have also mentioned to me that business is good so apparently this sector is recession proof at the minute. Our best guess is that work is drying up for people and they are trying out this new internet thingy as a new or additional means of marketing.
I’m very lucky to have so much work in one way with businesses going bust left, right and centre and people losing their jobs and houses but I wanted to play with my baby all day!? Basically, since Hanne’s arrival, my routine (if I ever had one!) has gone out the window. She dictates absolutely everything that happens or doesn’t happen in the house. Ideally, I’d like to get up around 9ish am and work solid until lunch then work some more until dinner then another hour or two followed by a relaxing evening in front of the TV in the company of my partner and child. In reality, what happens is that Hanne wakes up in the middle of the night once or twice for an hour or so each time and this alone kills my day as I’m used to about 10 hours straight sleep a night! If I don’t get that, I end up sleeping in very late, waking up dozy and cranky and unable to function correctly.
Then I have to mind baby as my partner takes her obligatory 2 hours to shower and dress while the phone hops and email dings with impatient clients with websites down and looming deadlines. Then it’s time for dinner which either I have to take more time out to make or mind baby while my partner makes it. All of this saps valuable working time and a million and one things go on the long finger. My renowned speed and efficiency as a service provider have suffered and my obsessive compulsive disorder when it comes to organising everything from my surroundings to my business has been cured!
So what’s the plan? There is no plan and never can there be one. I get a bit of work in when I can, play with baby when I can, do baby chores when I can and sleep when I can. It’s a balancing act and you just have to learn how to get things done. I wouldn’t swap it for anything!
Leon Quinn
Reverb Studios is a small one man high tech, digital design company in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co. Leitrim specialising in affordable design services including Web, Graphic, Audio and Video. www.ReverbStudios.ie Visit the Reverb Studios Blog for info on all things tech and web related and even a bit of baby stuff! www.ReverbStudios.ie/Blog and follow Reverb Studios updates on Twitter – www.Twitter.com/reverbstudios My Linkedin page – www.Linkedin.com/in/reverbstudios
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