Yeah, it's about the Coronavirus

byShannaBude

124 followers

5 years ago

So, I've been here a while.

Quite a while, really.

In three years, I've learned a lot. I've built websites. I've ranked keywords in Google. I've gotten traffic. I've come far enough to know that the training here works.

And that's as far as I've gone, for several different reasons, starting with the seeminly popular innability to commit to a niche.

For me, however, innability to commit comes from the fact that I am already committed to something--or, want to be. I already have something that I want to do and to sell online.

It's different from what most people here do. It involves me making a product, and marketing it. It involves start up costs, and an enormous (like ENORMOUS) time commitment. But none of this is really the problem. Really I'm just terrified that I can't do it. Terrified to put myself out there. Terrified to fail.

Oldest story in the book, right?

And beside, it's not like I have time. I have to work. I have to pay my bills. Most inconvenient of all, I actually like my job. I want to do this other thing more, but I want the job I have now, too. Not to meantion wanting to be a responsible adult who doesn't have to tap into my savings just to eat every month.

But for months now, every time I've gone into work, all I can think about is what I could be using the time for, what I could be BUILDING instead.

Then, yesterday, I got the call. "The decision has been made to close the retail stores for the time being," my boss tells me, her own voice shaking. Because it's scary. Every part of what the world faces in this moment is scary.

See? Told you this was a Coronavirus post

Everyone working online these days sounds so optimistic, taking about how great the online opportunities are in the midst of lockdown and quarantine. They're NOT wrong.

My history degree does force me to push back a little on the optimism. Diseases like the one we're facing now are scary. These things have ended civilizations, and globalization only magnifies the potential fallout on our co-dependent, world economy.

Not to mention the small scale, my co-workers with young children who depend on this job to pay the morgauge, my parents, five minutes from retiring, now praying over their life savings, and my aunt who has to send her people home because there's just no work to do without parts from China.

And still...

I find myself among the optimists

Still, despite everything that has gone wrong, and all the things that could still go so much worse, I--an eternal pessimist--am optimistic.

Still, getting the call that my job has essencially disappeared for who knows how long, I spend two seconds worrying about the rent, and then five minutes jumping for glee across my living room.

Don't get me wrong. I'm terriffied.

I'm also as excited as I've ever been.

I'm excited, because I suddenly have the excuse that I have been looking for for years. The excuse to stop being a semi-responsible adult with a day job, and BUILD something of my own instead.

Ironically, it's an excuse to stop having excuses

Let's face it, time was never really the problem. More a contributing factor than anything else.

The problem is and always has been fear.

The excuse is time.

I said above that diseases like this one have destroyed civilizations in the past. Thing is, most often, those civilizations do not stay destroyed. They rebuild, and they reinvent, because after the disease has gone, they have no choice.

I don't know what lies ahead in this, if we're over reacting, or under reacting, or how the global market will come through.

I do know that it's time for me to take the hint, recognize that--pandemic or no pandemic--life is short, and use whatever time I do have off to do the one good thing that ever can come out of these situations: Reinvent.