On Sundays I take time to give thanks. Today I’m thankful for my financial independence. After almost 18 years of being a SAHM (stay at home mom) I’m now working outside my home again. I’m working part-time in a pizza restaurant, and am very grateful for this opportunity. It doesn’t matter to me that there’s other things I trained for in the past that I could be making much more money at. I’m excited to be cleaning off tables, rolling pizza dough, and waiting on customers. It is a thrill to be able to get a paycheck, rather than what I was doing before.

Well, what I was doing before included work-at-home businesses that weren’t working very well for me. I own a web design business, and got very frustrated by constantly working on ‘other peoples sites’ rather than my own. It took all the fun and excitement and creative freedom out of my web design work, and I totally wasn’t happy doing it. Now that I’m working outside my home again, I’ve transformed my web design business into something I’m doing for me - by building up some blogs and improving sites that I started long ago.

I also had a profitable small town news website which I’m in the process of selling. I am so excited to be able to get out from under this small business. It had become like a ball and chain to me. What started as a community service project years before became unmanageable and frustrating. Too many people in my community wanted to diss the news editor (me!) and even though others here were positive and enthusiastic about the project, it wasn’t enough to make it worthwhile to me anymore. So part of my personal declaration of independence this year is to unload the site. The good news is that my best friend here, an experienced news writer, is buying the site. I’m training her to maintain it, and she’s looking into getting a grant for it so that she doesn’t have to constantly sell ads. Good for her! Good for me!

So my ongoing financial worries are for the time, defeated. I’m feeling great about working for someone else, and grateful that my youngest child is now 17, so I can do this.

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Inspired by: Independence Day at Create a Connection