It is only the 3rd blog post I write for My Laptop Life, but I’ve been at it for a while now. Exactly 2 months as I write these words. Time for a little catch up.
What happened since May 2020? Well, let’s avoid the discussions around COVID-19, everybody’s been (being) through it already and that won’t bring nothing new to the conversation.
Time for a change.
12 May 2020 marked my last day in my last job, as a Social Media Specialist in a local marketing agency. The beginning of a new journey, if possible, as far as I could go from the 9-5 life. My past 2 experiences were just too negative, having to deal with bosses with toxic personalities in toxic environments. Some people have the guts to stay, I decided I had the gust to leave it behind with nothing ahead.
So here we are. I didn’t really have a clear idea of what kind of business I was going to get into. Still don’t really to be honest. I just know that I want to work for myself and be able to build this laptop life I’ve read about so much. I want to be the master of my time, work like I want and take my mini-retirements whenever I want (for those who are not familiar with the concept, it comes from Tim Ferris and his 4-hour work week).
There is always so much you can learn but…
I love learning. Working in an agency with pressure on billable work made me realise that, as I didn’t have as much time as I wanted to do some learning.
Being finally on my own, I had so much time to read articles, listen to podcasts, watch YouTube videos… all the more reasons to actually postpone taking action. Beware, getting more knowledge is great, but practice makes perfection. You can have all the knowledge in the world, but what good does it make if you’re not using it?
Seeing the time goes by and my money go low, I confronted myself “Adeline, wtf dude? Why aren’t you doing anything?“. And then I remembered a TED Talk I watched about procrastination (sorry, I couldn’t find it but as soon as I can I’ll link it here). It was about how procrastination is stress-related. Stress related to the task you’re putting so much effort avoiding. That was it. After nailing down that requesting an ABN, subscribing to Shopify and ordering samples for a dropshipping store would make everything way too real, and therefore scary, I kicked myself in the a**.
There is a great TED Talk from Tim Ferris about Why you should define your fears. Fears cripple you. They keep you from moving forward. Defining those fears is defining their outcome (would it be that bad?) and their solutions/workaround (does it make this challenge less scary?).
Making decisions.
The next week, I then decided to just go for it. I got more to lose doing nothing than actually taking action. In the matter of a day, I got my ABN, my Shopify account, an AliExpress account and samples on the way.
Having decided as well that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in the same basket, I also started designing some Print-On-Demand items. Nothing crazy really, but I thought “you’re a woman who wants to be an entrepreneur, there’s your niche” and that’s how my designs came to life (on Canva). You can see my designs here.
That’s it for now.
I didn’t want to write something too long (and therefore boring), however I’ll be more than happy to answer any questions, clear out any vague information. Just contact me here.
Laptop Life Journal 