It is an business.

When you start your own business and there’s an IKEA nearby, you become extremely proficient at assembling furniture. You also learn other important things along the way, little bits of knowledge that eventually will help you gloss over the mundane details of business lordship.

A 31″ x 63″ GALANT table top fits perfectly in the back of a Subaru Legacy/Outback Wagon.

IKEA cardboard smells kinda funny. I cannot recommend letting it steep in your car for a couple days before taking it out.

If you choose to operate your business under any name other than your own (say, Brainside Out Industries in one case), the State requires that you file an assumed name for your business. They say that this is in the best interest of the consumer, so that consumers know your business is a legitimate entity tied to an actual person (or an actual corporation, depending on your business model), located at an actual physical address.

If junk mail is any indication, however, putting your business on public record is actually in the best interest of banks, credit card companies, loan officers, insurance agents and attorneys.

You wish there was a way for you to meet other self-proclaimed anarcho-capitalists.

For you, there are no bouldering gyms within twenty miles. This makes your heart ache.

When you are self-employed, you do not get paid for brewing tea, going to the bathroom, picking your nose or firing up those weblogs. Even when you are incredibly productive, you are lucky if you spend half your time on billable work.

That being said, the road to financial solvency often manifests itself in distractions. Stay focused, but keep your ear to the ground.

Newsreaders are a blessing and a curse. A blessing because they turn what used to be a half-hour traipse across the internet into a five-second refresh hit. A curse for the same reason. Ease-of-access cuts in both directions.

You use NetNewsWire. It is the only newsreader you have found that works well enough, works consistently enough, that you feel you can trust it.

Having been away from it for so long, you are addicted to content. New content. Fresh content. Constant content. Nothing has the capacity to grab your attention for longer than ten seconds. Except shiny objects. Man, how do they make those things so damn shiny? Amazing!

People want to know where your business cards are, but they also find it to be a legitimate excuse that you’ve been so busy with client work that you haven’t had a chance to print them up, yet.

Vans are the best shoes on the planet.

Working while standing up is great. Really, it is. So long as you use a trackball and always wear your elbow pad, your battered hands hardly bother you at all. This is astounding, absolutely astounding, considering that barely six months ago your hands hurt so bad they had you in tears.

After lunch, however, everything but your hands starts to ache. Fortunately, the solution to this has recently been unpacked from cardboard.

All things considered, you wish that you were as familiar with the phases of the moon as you had been last season. Widgets are handy, but it’s not the same.