If my last post made you think that all I had was fun since my corporate career ship started to sink, then rest assured that it wasn’t so.

Leaving my corporate employment haven, did not just mean no more overcrowded train journeys, long working hours in concrete office boxes and spending most of my time in deadline and profit-driven corporate environments. Leaving the corporate world was at the same time a goodbye to familiar territory (doing what I know and what I’ve always done) and most of all to the secure and high monthly pay cheques.

“Smooth seas do not make skilled sailors.” ~African Proverb

As my wallet shrunk, fears and doubts kept creeping in. No longer being able to say what I was (a web and intranet project and programme manager), I even started questioning who I was. No wonder then that any initial attempts in setting up my own business failed. Was I a failure?

How I broke through to the entrepreneur

The best way I can put it is that I just went with the flow. I went along with it. Despite all fears.

I did what I had to do and what I felt in my heart was right. I embraced and supported our family business and as for working – perhaps living? – in a box, it no longer felt right.

“The trouble with the rat race is that even if you win, you’re still a rat.” ~Lily Tomlin

Simply going with it, I slowly started to see the gains instead of the losses, the achievements we accomplished with our business and most of all the potential for continued growth, both for myself as a person as well as for our mechanic workshop and my writing business.

Eventually as I became more and more comfortable with my unconventional ‘patchwork’ or ‘portfolio career’, the day came when I actually realised and acknowledged that it works. More than that, it is actually damn fine. And when I declared this, I instantly felt free!

I am officially no longer a rat and make my living on my own terms, which is perfectly acceptable (no, it is adorable!) and which makes me a colourful and free-spirited entrepreneur!

“Change is hard at first, messy in the middle and gorgeous at the end.” ~Robin Sharma