If anyone knows, it’s me; being an entrepreneur is hard stuff. You’re either working at home or from some virtual office where your computer is practically attached to your hip, your iPad is nearby, and your cell phone, i.e. minicomputer, is also close in the vicinity. In our virtual life, we’re over-connected, but in real life, we spend many hours disconnected from real, personal interaction.

While there are several pros related to working for oneself, these pros also have their own cons – it’s the infamous blessing and curse.

Pro: You set your own schedule.

Con: You set your own schedule. You have to be disciplined enough to find clients and get your work done. If you don’t get your work done, you don’t get paid. Period.

Pro: You’re your own boss.

Con: As someone told me, you actually have many bosses. Each of your clients becomes your boss. The only thing is that they’re only your boss for as long as you’re working together.

Pro: You don’t have to worry about annoying coworkers.

Con: You miss the personal interaction with your coworkers. These people became your family. You share laughs, tears, jokes, and even have an opportunity to brainstorm and develop brilliant ideas together.

I’ll tell you…the first and last are the two pros and cons I struggle with most. Missing my friends and the disciple to get things done without repetition. Repetition gets old, and like with any other creative, it may be one of the quickest ways to burnout and/or limited productivity. Give me my freedom, and it’s a little easier.

However, I must say, I had a great day today – and I want to share the wealth of how I did it.

To begin, I didn’t have a set schedule. I woke up, ran an errand, and then hit the gym for a workout. After that I reactivated my cable. This was HUGE! In my case, cable is what I needed to feel reconnected to the outside world…to not feel so alone. Going to Starbucks, the library, and other virtual offices just didn’t do it for me. TV is a distraction and an escape. Virtual offices feel like work. The distraction of TV makes work more pleasant.

Then I went on to client work – writing social media posts and submitting to client for approval. Though this doesn’t sound like much, anyone who manages social media knows this takes a bit of art and intuition (i.e. mind reading) to make sure you don’t have a lot of revisions to the posts after the client’s review.

Once I was done with the posts, I took a break. Yes. There was work to do, but there a break was necessary. I took a trip downtown. I discovered new destinations, took a few pics, and had a chance to take advantage of a couple of local food establishments. And the bonus is that I had am now number 2 among my friends on the Foursquare leaderboard. Woot!

Now, I’m at the library and back to work. In addition to writing this blog post, I’ve already found a couple of books related to the biz. I’ll probably do more client work as well as look for a good read for my break/free time in the future.

To sum it up, my perfect workday consisted of taking care of work while spending time catering to my emotional and physical health. Entrepreneurship and freelancing is a blessing. We’ve been entrusted with skills and discipline that not everyone has or wills to have, but if we don’t continuously take care of ourselves or our business, it can become a curse. While taking care of business, remember “Rome wasn’t built in a day,” but if no one was diligent enough to continue building, it wouldn’t be what it is today. So take time to smell the roses and take care of self – all while keep business goals and responsibilities also in mind.

Live, love, prosper.

Regina