Blog Entry: 12 when the grind is grinding you down.
So, my day starts at 05:00-05.30. I get up, get ready, make lunch, and have to leave by 06:45. This is so I can navigate my way from Cochrane to the near hour journey to Calgary and be there to start pulling out cars at 07:45. I will leave at 17:00 and maybe be home 17:45-18:00, this is now killing my focus and in turn, stopping getting the business moving! On average I loose 2 hours a day in just travel and it’s become unacceptable. Jess is still in college, and I have to keep earning high to survive, but I will be trapped in a solid and depressing, eat, sleep, work, loop indefinitely if I don’t change something!
Now to confirm, this is not a sob story! This is a reality for 99% of the world. Society is geared to making you feel like selling your time for an eat, sleep, repeat employment is your only option, but It’s not. Unfortunately, achieving something that is yours, well it’s not easy; there’s not a specific blueprint, nor can anyone tell you what the right answers are. The one guarantee is, no one will be there to catch you if you fall. I see it like flying, success is intrinsically linked to how much you’re willing to push and persevere. Don’t be fooled, there is every cunt and their uncle on the internet selling “the 5 steps to success” or a “get rich in 3 months” special plan, to which you must pay up front for. But please don’t be fooled! ‘snake oil’ is still ‘snake oil’ and if you read the microscopic small print, no guarantees are promised.
Now I am willing to accept my cynical, sceptical, and untrusting view of the world might be a product of the bullying I sustained my entire school life, or my constant unconscious drive to sail against the current, but all the successful long lasting businesses I have seen and been involved with (not counting the ones that are just pure scams) have all been started by people that have traded all their time and energy for the reward of owning and operating something that’s theirs.
When I was 21, I started working for a garage that specifically worked on Porsche, Lotus, and Aston Martins. I got to watch first-hand how much the owner was willing to give to make it a success. He gave everything, his time, his money, and every last bit of patience he had, dealing with issues that arose and most times totally out of his control. Thanks to Paul, I walk into my present and future ventures with both eyes wide open, I will leave the rose-tinted glasses for Elton John’s stage shows, knowing at some point if I want this to work, I have to commit fully. This is not something I can do right now but loosing 2 hours in travel? Well, that can’t be the only option on my table. The hardest bit is coming home after a very physically and mentally draining day, knowing I will need to find the correct frame of mind to change gears to build and push the company. To think of marketing ideas, to keep the website and four social platforms updated, to manage finances, to locally push adverts like card drops and leaflets in strategically placed locations and all the way down to working out costs, packages and where to price what we have to offer.
When I was 21, I started working for a garage that specifically worked on Porsche, Lotus, and Aston Martins. I got to watch first-hand how much the owner was willing to give to make it a success. He gave everything, his time, his money, and every last bit of patience he had, dealing with issues that arose and most times totally out of his control. Thanks to Paul, I walk into my present and future ventures with both eyes wide open, I will leave the rose-tinted glasses for Elton John’s stage shows, knowing at some point if I want this to work, I have to commit fully. This is not something I can do right now but loosing 2 hours in travel? Well, that can’t be the only option on my table. The hardest bit is coming home after a very physically and mentally draining day, knowing I will need to find the correct frame of mind to change gears to build and push the company. To think of marketing ideas, to keep the website and four social platforms updated, to manage finances, to locally push adverts like card drops and leaflets in strategically placed locations and all the way down to working out costs, packages and where to price what we have to offer.
I would take this in baby steps, and this would start with using all my time effectively. Where I had been listening to music every day, now it was replaced with Jordan Belfort’s, or similar podcasts, giving inspiration, hints and tips from owners that have taken businesses from nothing to successful. I would now use my lunch times to do one thing every day that would have a direct benefit to the company and our progression forwards. Jess and I would use our drive home to talk about and plan where to go next. If nothing else, this gave me positivity and that in itself is a benefit!
February marked the end of our three months hold on the company name and so we officially registered the company. Now yes, I could have gone the route of sole trader for a period of time, but if I’m going to do this I’m going to try and be both feet in where I can. As with the move of countries we had pretty much started again and this meant getting everything, including simple things like a new filing cabinet! But no fear, my thrifty, shopaholic wife Jess found a heavy duty one for free on Facebook. Now for my OCD obsessive ADHD run brain to sort a filing system so we have a structure to our filing system. If left to Jess, we would just have strategically placed stacks of random papers that would need Alan Turing to decipher and decode what the fuck they related to! To add to my issues my decade old MacBook had finally reached the point that I was no longer able to update, and I could not see a way to modify it to comply with Adobe’s latest version. It had now decided I couldn’t even use the fucking 1GB graphics card it had, reverting it to a speed that would struggle to rival 90’s MS DOS. The one good thing was Apple had finally released the M1 Pro Max chip so at least it would be a decent upgrade, unfortunately not the cheapest, or the fastest with a two month wait! But it would prove to be 100% worth it.
I had this impression I would go back to hockey when we settled in Canada, but it appears to not be the cheapest sport choice! And with all the C word restrictions (Covid, not cunt), not the easiest to get into either. A good start would be a new stick, skates, and gloves, oh and getting my out of practice arse onto the ice!! I’m a strong believer good fitness bodes to a productive attitude and when I say going back to, most of my experience was street hockey in the UK so not quite the same. Thanks to the Mighty Duck’s film franchise the mid-nineties England, like most of the western world had seen a big push in hockey, and as ice rinks are not as available as halls our side of the pond, the easiest option was street or roller hockey! Now the mighty Great Dunmow did have a team called the Dunmow Demons, but due to some questionable politics that no one wanted to talk about, they had been kicked out the league and were no more. So, in their place a family whom had recently won big on the lottery and had 3 boys all ex-Demon players had started a new Dunmow team. Within their first month I had decided I was going to join and be the next Gordon Bombay! ……. Between using aggressive inline skates instead of hockey ones, getting into a fight with one of the owners sons and not being very good at hockey in general, my career lasted only but a few seasons, I was awarded a new age ‘everyone’s a winner’ and ‘well done for participating’ trophy and a mouse mat, that I think my mum still uses……. But this was not the hockey greatness I had hoped for! As with many things in my life I intend on trying again, if only for a little fun and if I could get my skating legs and stick handling back this year at least next season I might be able to give it a real go.
I will elaborate further on the hockey side, as I find it a time that stood out. My dad had been quite enthusiastic about it, that was until he found out how shit I was. And the games were fun, even though we were losing consistently every game. The travel was annoying as most games involved a trip to the scenic places of south England like Milton Keynes or Dagenham…… but I think the game that sticks out most was a North London game we played in Ilford. Now don’t get me wrong, no one is under the illusion hockey is anything but an excuse for a fight, although as this was a kid’s hockey tournament we all knew there was harsh penalties for violence! This did not stop the other team from trying. They were stick hooking people’s legs, head-butting and mouthing off like Amy Winehouse in the heavy drug years. With all that good stuff we knew trouble was on the horizon and after five minutes of the second phase, I had been smashed into a wall by two guys so hard it snapped my wooden stick and they had shoved one of our more easily provoked players over while he was just standing there. We thought the shit was about to go down and as the blind ref turned a Stevie Wonder style eye to another blatant penalty, I knew that was not going to swing with the team. Now as I said this was a kid’s league, which meant lots of parents had come and given up their Saturday’s as well, and it turns out they were more fucked off about the useless ref than we were, they had become vocal! This was all reciprocated back from the Ilford’s teams parents.
Fuck worrying the kids would kick off, within two minutes we had a parent-on-parent cage match’s going on. With no surprise this was frowned upon by the ref, the sports centre staff, and any parents that were not fighting at this point. This ended with the game being called off and many parents receiving bans or warnings.
It was soon after this we had our awards gala. The jumped-up arrogant prick that was the owner’s youngest son, was on top form. The same one that I had floored with a strong gut punch in the school’s main hallway for talking shit to me only days earlier. He had now decided he was unhappy about this and being the man he was he asked two guys from a few years above me to have a chat with me……this decision speaks volumes for itself. I was always so confused as to how this douche canoe was part of the same family, both his older brothers were cool, neither acted self-entitled nor carried a chip. Quite a shame really. I had been losing interest for a few weeks and soon after that I stopped, within a year the whole family left for Australia and the team was taken over by other parents. I did enjoy it and it was good fitness but as with most things, maybe the wrong time for me.
The winter is dark and more noticeably than I’m used to. This heavy polar contradiction from summer is something new for me. England has a mostly dark, dank, grey dystopian climate, so come winter, not a lot changes. Now the plan had been to snowboard, go to thermal spas and enjoy the mountains in the snow, but that wasn’t on the cards this year. Instead, I had to be more resourcefully. I would go out to Ghost Lake, go on hikes around Cochrane and occasionally take my camera to work and on my lunch to capture the time stretched styles that as random as ice cream on a roast dinner shape Calgary. There’s no denying it, Calgary is a city that’s so defined by its random and sporadic style changes. London has its style cemented in century’s old heritage, a past that is emulated in its every incarnation and timeless to the point new buildings don’t detract from the deep routed cornerstone heritage. Calgary does not have this. All bar a few buildings, the rest look as pop-up and temporary as a ‘here today gone tomorrow’ sales pitch, and you can see this evolution as clear as a blue cap with orange bill. Everyone has put a patch on and now it’s a random diverse quilt, but the canvas that just keeps giving is the mountains. I have seen some of the best sunsets driving home, a random mismatch of refraction painted across the sky, a source of constant inspiration.
Out of this time came this blog, along with the idea for our upcoming couples podcast, something I am very excited to get underway with. No, January through February was not the first winter I had hoped for, but it hadn’t been a total waste. I did order my new MacBook an extended screen and a USB-C hub, all money I would rather not spend, but progression is not free and on reflection it’s been very well used and was 100% necessary. I wonder if, when things progress and the company builds, will it reach a time where I don’t even register these expenses? Who knows, but right now any expense is front and centre in my consciousness. I know this is 100% honeymoon stages and I know the real hard work is yet to be fully embraced. In the past I would let weeks and months pass and that time didn’t bother me like it does now, now every day that passes where I’m at a company doing a job that doesn’t progress DanF40 Group just feels like a wasted day, I just know I can’t overload our semi-waterlogged, patchwork dingy, the metaphor of our financial tight rope walk we are currently navigating. So unfortunately, at this time an eat, sleep, repeat job is a necessity, but I heavily pine for the time this is not a requirement.
Next time April to july , the Honda fails! I wash some rocks. I fix the Honda. We get some company branded uniforms. The Honda fails again, and I get a job closer to home! Until next time my friends.
