Did you join the rat race right out of college?

Written by Chris on December 2, 2008 – 6:00 pm -

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I’d love to hear your feedback and comments on this. Here’s the background info for those of you who may not have been hanging around for the last 8 months.

I graduated college in May. I had my full time job lined up before Thanksgiving 2007. This gave me the chance to coast through my final semester of college, enjoy my time, and get my work done instead of looking for a job. However, I think this also deterred me from going full force at my businesses and different opportunities, because I knew I was safe and had something lined up that was a sure bet to start on June 16th.

June 16th rolled around and I started my first day of my full time career after college and in “the real world”. I’ve been working since and enjoying it. Seriously, I like my job, love the company, love the people. But I’m bored. I don’t have a lot of interaction with people (I’m on the phone occasionally or meeting with program teams, but that’s it). Plus there is this annoying noise that comes from the vents when the heat turns on - almost sounds like a fire alarm going off. I will note that come the new year I will be switching departments. But anyway….

I’ve always been the type of person that did not want to have a full time job or work for anyone else. However, my situation changed in January. I proposed to my girlfriend of almost 4 years. All of the sudden, a lot more responsibility came around. I had to start worrying about her and us in the future, not just me. The full time job was that safety net - you know the deal - monthly paycheck, full benefits, vacation time, flexible work schedule, the whole 9 yards. So the net that the job offers of knowing that there won’t be issues paying rent, putting food on the table, and being prepared for what life throws at us is greater than a need to work for myself right now.

Yet, more and more lately, as I hear, read, listen to, and see people talk about hustling, breaking out, quiting the rat race, launching your own business, etc it gets that fire within me burning at full force again and makes me want to quit tomorrow. Yet I can’t. I’m not in a position to do so. The business is not in a position to support that. My goal when I started working full time was to be out within 3 years. I think I’m changing that to be out in August. It is a crazy goal to set. But that gives me literally 9 months to bust my ass, make moves, and do a shit ton of business. If that can happen, I can leave this full time job and grow the businesses to be completely successful and supportive. Like I said, I change departments and jobs after the first of the year, so this could all completely change and I may wind up staying the 3 years - you never know.

However, I will tell you that I will be out of here and supporting myself and my family through my businesses soon. It just depends on your definition of soon I suppose.

For now, I’ll continue to hustle as I can, grow as much as possible, and try to land the freaking plane as often as possible.

I’d love to hear comments, support, suggestions, thoughts, ideas, anything from you all, my loyal readers!

Tags: full time job, hustle, land the plane, rant
Posted in Rants / Random, Website Updates / News | 3 Comments »

Dorm Room Biz Saturday Ramblings

Written by Chris on August 2, 2008 – 5:00 pm -

Things have been crazy the past couple weeks for me! Here are some random thoughts and updates on what has been going on behind the scenes at Dorm Room Biz and with my life.

Computer Issues
I have been having a bunch of problems with my desktop computer at home. I am currently using my laptop while trying to get everything fixed up. However, on my laptop I don’t have all my normal programs installed such as Adobe Photoshop, so the work that I can do is limited. I have some kind of virus on my computer that only lets me access a few different websites, slows everything down, and displays random popups in Internet Explorer. I’ve ran Ad-Aware, SpySweeper, and other adware/virus softwares and none of them have fully gotten rid of the problem. I even purchased Norton Antivirus online (got it half off by using coupon codes) and that still hasn’t done everything. I am hoping to have this resolved soon. I’ve moved everything to my external hard drive and if it comes down to it, I will just do a wipe and reload of my computer to fix everything.

Outer Banks Last Weekend
Last weekend (Thursday - Sunday) I was down the Outer Banks of North Carolina chilling out with my family and friends. I made some videos while driving around that I planned on posting right away…but that obviously didn’t happen. It will probably go up tomorrow because I still want to post it just for fun! This also slowed down my chances of getting a whole lot of work done.

Website Design Income
I usually do a Dorm Room Biz Income Report at the end of each month and one will be coming soon for July. However, I thought it was worth mentioning that through my website design business, I made just shy of $900 in July. I’d like to continue this through August and the rest of the year, so if you are in the need of a website design, feel free to contact me!

Busy with a Full Time Job
As many of you know, I am working a full time job and started in mid June. The first month I was there was really slow however things have been picking up and a couple people in my area are transferring out this month. Therefore I have been working until at least 6 PM pretty much every night and soon will probably be working overtime to reach our deadlines. This slows down blogging, web development projects, and everything else. However, it is fun work so I enjoy it. I also enjoy the opportunity to blog while at work when I get the down time, so this sort of makes up for my lack of motivation when I get home from a long day at the office.

Guest Posters
Because I am working full days at the office, I am looking for any guest posters that may be interested in submitting articles to Dorm Room Biz. Dorm Room Biz has about 100 RSS subscribes and gets good readership, as well as sometimes linked to from other blogs such as the Business Opportunities Weblog Network (thanks for the mention during the week Rich!) If you would be interested, get at me via Twitter or email and let me know what you’d like to write about!

Contest Time Coming Soon
Over the last week or so I have been working on putting together a contest for Dorm Room Biz readers. I’m searching out sponsors for different prizes including books, free advertisements, cash, and more. If you’d like to offer your product, service, or other prize to the Dorm Room Biz readers through a contest, please contact me!

Interested in keeping up with what I am doing? While I may not be blogging everyday, I am usually on Twitter while at work and updating throughout the day! Be sure to follow me on Twitter and start up a conversation with me! Add @chrispund to your Twitter friends!

Tags: full time job, gues posters, twitter
Posted in Website Updates / News | 1 Comment »