December 28th 2018 --- coming up on 3 years. My life, my business.


For the last 3 years its been really hard for me. In December 2018, my mother was hospitalized, while my grandma was in hospice after she stopped taking dialysis. I already had scaled down my business seeing how things were going but by early December I knew I had to pause my business. My mother was hospitalized December 28th and my grandma passed on December 30th. 

All my life I've had one or the other as backup. Now I'm depressed and alone at the family house. Trying to manage the house and make sure everything is OK when I had never done this before. I always allowed them to do everything that concerned them because my thoughts were, concentrate on you and get things in order for you. If they need help they will ask you for it. That never happened. Now I'm getting surprised with things and having to adjust to them. 

While my business went into total shutdown with partners calling and vendors contacting me. At first I was optimistic it would be a short shutdown and I would be back going within a month or two. The clients I knew that I had to give more attention to. I talked to them about my situation and some parted ways with me because they needed more closer attention and in my situation I couldn't do it. 

So I was down to a few residential clients, no business clients and no real income. My mother would remain in the hospital for a few weeks, get transferred to a step down and then rehab. When she got home it was April 19th, the day after her birthday. Now having to deal with the fact that my mother is wheelchair bound is more stress on me. 

I attempted to see about restarting. I looked at a way I could do business. I was in the middle of moving from break/fix to managed services so I continued to work on it. So I always had an issue using my home address as my business address. Not just because it didn't look professional but it also opened my home number to scammers and people calling that number for business purposes. So I looked a getting a virtual address. I looked at the UPS store. I also started going to University CoWork for events which I though was a great resource, they had that service also. So I went with them. Now with my virtual business address I felt better. I already had a Google voice number which I continue to use for the business.

Even though I'm a tech, I'm a horrible website designer as far as business is concerned. I can always throw up a basic site but complex things, forgetaboutit. With no income par say I couldn't really hire anyone. So I just used my Google business profile with the page and my free blogger account, which btw I'm using right now to write this. 

Then everything stalled again because on top of the stress of managing the house and being a caregiver I started having my own health issues dominate things. I've always dealt with high blood pressure and my excessive weight but now diabetes is really becoming an issue. There were days I just couldn't get my own self out of bed. So nothing got done. All the work I started to do to get my business back in order just fell to the waste side. I was putting off vendors hoping I can get to the other side. Not telling them the whole situation fearing the interested calls would stop. 

All of 2019 was me on autopilot just trying to get by. I continued to try to deal with things on my own with no success. 

2020 came and all the pandemic issues everyone was dealing with. When the shutdowns started happening I was probably worse off than most. I've gone though a year of doubt, pain and health issues. Now with the lock-down I don't get to see anyone, contact turns into phone calls and zoom meetings. So I tried to pivot with the business. Managed services works under the lock-down. All I have to do is set up my site with the services I offer. Network like I've always done but now online. Set up remote services to take care of clients and lastly work on getting vendors to provide services I don't offer. 

It sounds easy until I realized two problems. One, I'm know as a computer guy to most people. Not a lot of people know I have a degree in computer networking/ w Cisco from Robert Morris University IL. Which makes me a network administrator not a computer repair guy. But since I haven't been doing this as my main focus in my business it doesn't give good optics. 

So as I'm trying to sell my services as a network admin, network security and digital infrastructure services. Its going nowhere because of the lack of prior work in those areas in my business. I'm still the computer guy. So I just keep working on computers for the people I already know. but losing tools and changing software has hurt that also as no real income creates a tech with no really good tools. This causes me to get careless with come people and having people walk away from me. I'm so stressed about my personal life and health I don't deal with these situations properly. 

By the end of 2020 I was scared. Not for my business, but I should be. but for my life as a whole. I'm trying to use my volunteer work as a keep busy kind of thing and allow me to socialize which I sorely miss. Its all crumbling also. Then I get voted in a President of the Bowen HS Alumni Association. Geez. 

At first I didn't want to take this cause of all the health, mental health and caregiver related stress I was going thought but I just asked Marc the VP to stick with me and help me though. 


I've gotten better with my health as I went though some diabetes and proper eating classes. I'm on some new meds and I'm just focused on portion control and better eating on a whole. I'm still no where near where I need to as all of 2021 to this point is a better version of 2020. 

My business is still paused but I don't stop talking about myself. I purchased a business t-shirt to wear places. I talk to people when I can. I'm trying to work with the Commercial Ave business district, really any local business district I can. I'm planning to restart in Jan 2022.

I'm working to balance my caregiver, personal and business obligations. I know its not going to be easy. I have to get to a place where I have help in each one of these cause working alone isn't going to work. 2020 and this year has proven that. 

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