You might be an entrepreneur if…you’ve slept on the floor of your office more than once.
Heck, I’ve slept on the floor more times than I can remember, although thankfully it’s been a while, plus I work from home now and I’m not so lazy that I can’t make it to the bed.
I wrote the following back in 2005…
It’s 6am. I’m just waking up. Now stop reading right there. What images are going through your mind at this point? You see someone in bed, someone waking up from a night of peaceful slumber. Someone who’s ready to take a shower, get ready for work, and take on the day. But that’s not my situation. I’m laying on the floor of my office. I’m fully dressed in the clothes I’ve been wearing for 24 hours now–since I woke up and got dressed yesterday. The un-padded carpet has a dark spot on it where my cheek was and is still damp from drool. I can’t keep my mouth closed when I sleep. Sometimes I close one side of my mouth so that as I lay on the floor I can breathe but keep the drool in at the same time.
I’m stiff. That floor felt pretty comfortable when I laid down on it. Like the embrace of my wife. Now I realize it’s just hard and flat. My limbs ache and feel like wood. Every movement reminds me I’m alive, but just barely.
My eyes hurt and feel puffy. I’m still tired. I only went to sleep an hour ago around 5am, after I started passing out while sitting in my chair in front of the computer. I was working on a project. Three years from now I won’t remember what it was, but I’ll probably remember sleeping on the floor. I thought owning your own business meant you told other people what to do. I thought it meant you told other people to stay up late and get projects done so that deadlines would be met. So why am I the only one who stayed past 6pm yesterday? Am I such a poor leader that I can’t get anyone to follow me? Or is it that I’m afraid to even ask? Or is it that for me it’s more than just a job? More than just a paycheck?
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Good heavens, I’m glad I don’t do that any more. What was I thinking? Not that I wouldn’t be willing to work overnight here and there, but somehow I think it was more of a choice than I realized at the time, and I simply don’t make the same choice these days. Somehow I thought it was glorious at the time and I reveled in my suffering, but these days I’d rather be in bed at home getting a full night’s rest. And the funny thing is that although I haven’t spent a night at the office in a long time, I’m making more money now than I ever have, and trust me, it’s not that I’m reaping the investment I made back then, I’m just being smarter about running the business. Kind of ironic, eh? Maybe it was the lack of sleep that kept me stupid for so long.
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