It's been nearly a month now since my impromptu 'retirement' from the day job. It's truly been busy the entire time, including a whole week in there to deal with a death in the family, etc.
Just after New Years day, my mom passed away, unexpectedly. She had been ill for only a day or two. It really came on fast, and was quite a surprise to all of us. It's hard to say goodbye to the woman who brought me into this world, and who cared for me all through childhood. I will miss a lot.
Meanwhile, as a result, I spent most of last week in Madison with the family, helping out with funeral details and other items, as well. Now, hopefully life will settle out - at least regarding family stuff. I sure hope things are quieter now.
My last post (just a short time ago) talks about my newsletter. That's now ready to roll, as well. I also got a draft of my book ready for review (a friend of mine already found some oops's in it). So once I get the feedback from her, I can update it and send it out to the next set of reviewers. Hopefully it's closing in on being ready to start querying again.
The next task is to get my storefront going. Currently, I am simply linking to my lulu.com storefront. Unfortunately, Lulu.com discontinued selling CDs. So I need to find a different storefront for those. My current plan is to use the Coffeecup.com shopping cart designer/creator program to build a new storefront and store it on my website location. At least initially, I will have self hypnosis MP3s available for download through that site.
I still need to figure out the technology for making my books and CDs available through this same storefront. I think that will take some more doing. It is not easy to forward orders to another site using that technology.
In addition to the business-related work, I started the outplacement workshop that Boston Scientific provides for RIF-ees. So far I'm pretty impressed. They provide you with a personal coach, and are flexible enough to facilitate an entrepreneurial or active retirement approach as well as the more traditional route of simply finding another job in the same field.
So the pace continues. Life goes on, building the business and dealing with all of the former day-job-related residuals. Its a time of progress - and for better or for worse, a few breaks as well.
