Today is the one year anniversary of my move into self-employment. 

The motivation to go out on my own was to improve my perspective on career and life.  For a long time I defined myself by the work I did – to turn a phrase, my living was my life.  One of my goals for this first year was to separate those two things, and I think I’ve done an excellent job of that.  In the past year I’ve been able to earn a decent living while volunteering over 100 hours at my kids’ school, managing several open-source projects, and speaking at eight different technology venues.  I’m spending better quality time with my family, and we are all noticeably more happy and content with our life together.

My focus for this first year was internal, to steer myself to the life I want to live.  Now that I’m feeling comfortable in this skin, this next year will focus on business growth.