Archive for August, 2008

The lurgy

Posted in Tales from the grind-stone on August 17th, 2008 by MrCranky

One of the biggest problems with running your own business is handling illness and time off. You get used to driving the business forward, dealing with all the clients, making sure everyone knows what they’re doing and that there aren’t any hidden snags waiting. So when you get ill, it’s hard to switch off and give yourself time to recover, because you know that there are a whole bunch of things that need doing and if you don’t deal with them then they just won’t get done. And that’s been my curse – a bad cold in early July, which took a week to clear, but left me with a crippling, wracking cough that still hasn’t shifted. The cough in turn causes sleepless nights, and so leaves me generally grumpy (well, grumpier than usual) and less able to work. And of course there’s so much to be done that I can’t readily give myself days off to help the recovery, which makes the whole thing worse.

Couple the illness with preparations for an upcoming three week holiday around the US, and I’ve been run ragged for the last month, which really isn’t good. On the other hand, it’s forced me to make sure that the rest of the team are good to keep working on their own without me micro-managing everything.

Being ill has radically cut down on my ability to tackle the little additional things that I normally do in addition to the regular day-to-day work of the Company though, hence the blogging hiatus. It remains on the to-do list, every day taunting me by being something I really want to do, but never being high enough on the priorities to actually get done.

It’s also meant that my enjoyment of the EIF this year was radically cut down. But thankfully the venue was just a few hundred yards along the road from our office, which made it much easier to both attend and still be on top of our normal work. I’ll write up my impressions from the talks as usual, but that may have to wait until later in the week.

We’ve also taken on work for a new client – another WiiWare development, which is good as it helps us cement our understanding of the platform. But that is mostly going to rest in the hands of Tim and Pete as I go off travelling from Friday. Our hotels mostly have wi-fi connections (I think I’d probably go insane if I didn’t have net access for three weeks) so I’ll be talking with the office over Skype and email in case of emergencies. But hopefully I’ll be able to relax and remember what life outside of work is all about!


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