Day Twenty Two - A Donation to my Blog

Day 22 was back to work and therefore, back to reality for me. As part of my planned new regime, I was up at 6AM to spend a couple of hours writing for the blogs. It was quite a productive session, and we finally set off for the office at 9.

All hell broke loose at that point – several people who had been waiting for bills to be paid all phoned in succession and we had to fob them off. This is so draining on the energy front, and I really hate this living in fear of my own telephone. I tried hard to stay focused on the actions we had agreed the previous day – things we hoped might generate some income for us. But it is so difficult to tackle things like that with the enthusiasm required when you really do feel like curling up into a little ball and telling everyone to leave you alone.

There have been some really hard lessons during this time for me. I’ve never been what you would describe as a “hard” businessman, and when things started to go wrong I was convinced that the answer lay in becoming a total hardass in the future. But as our troubles have progressed, I’ve leaned the other way. For the first time in my really quite blessed life, I have felt what it is like to be desperate and in trouble. I intend never to forget that feeling, whatever I do or don’t achieve in the future, I will always remember how it feels to be like this, and will apply that in my dealing with other people – if I become successful again, I really want to try to give back by helping other people in this situation.

Just when I thought I couldn’t take any more, something amazing happened – I received a Paypal donation of €5. I re read the email several times and even checked my Paypal account, and sure enough the money was there. I don’t know the person who left it – all I have is the email address and a comment they made on the site. Whoever you are, thank you so much, thank you for taking the trouble to do that, and I hope you will keep visiting the site and that I can give you some value for your money. Far more rewarding than the money, was the realization that somebody actually cared, and I hope that I can do the same for somebody else, or to use that horrible colloquialism “Pay it forward.”

We managed to get through the day and picked up some food shopping from our dwindling cash supply, and then got home to find that the internet wasn’t working! At first I thought it was the whole village, but then I called the telephone company to find out we had been disconnected because the bank hadn’t made the payment. That necessitated a trip to the bank to pay the bill with cash, and I hope we’ll be reconnected during the day today. So for any of you who follow me on Twitter – that’s why I wasn’t around last night. And if you don’t follow me, then please do http://www.twitter.com/mikeslifeblog !!

Not having internet meant a quiet night reading, and after my six AM start, I went out like a light.