Striving to be the person my dog thinks I am.

It’s been a week now since I walked away from my regular, nine-to-five job and started the hunt for the new, new thing.  Actually, it was a 7 am to 4.45 job, which means nigh on a ten hour day, including lunch making somebody else rich.  But who’s counting.

My new day now includes a train ride from downtown to Calgary Technologies (CT)  and back.  It’s a surprisingly good time to think about what’s ahead of you for the day, and what’s behind you at the end of it.  Most of this post was written during those rides.

My working space at CT is a study carrol.  The last time I sat in one of these for any length of time was in Sedgewick Library at UBC while pursuing an undergrad degree.  All I can remember of that experience was  it was a good place to nap.  But my new carrol is a great place to work — it really does eliminate all distractions, and you can focus on the work, without the sense of isolation you get working in a full cubicle, or heaven forbid, the home office.

Just as quickly and as unexpectedly as the melancholia came, it departed.  I think I just needed some tangible affirmation that I wasn’t totally in the wilderness.  A day or two at CT, surrounded by people who were in various stages of the same boat, provided that. 

In the past, I had been fairly quick to blow off the value of ‘networking’, but even after a short time, it’s really hard to imagine doing the same thing out of the back bedroom.  Just hearing the sound of other peoples’ voices seems to reinforce the idea I’m not in this alone.  And when those voices are talking software and start-ups, so much the better.

An old friend of mine came to visit yesterday — my first visitor in the new digs — and I found myself genuinely excited to tell him what I was up to — I haven’t felt that way about work for a very, very long time.  It feels like I’ve been away on a long, strange trip, and I’m finally back home.

Details of the actual work being pursued can be found on www.intellog.com/blog, and I’ll make no attempt to repeat that here.  This is more of a macroscopic view of trying to get the entire enterprise off the ground.  But I can say this — the work  I have undertaken is going better that I had any right to expect.  I hope to have an early prototype available shortly, which will help tremendously in the fund raising process.

So, in summary (for now), if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re feeling a little like I was last week, don’t worry, the feeling passes quickly once you get down to doing the things you need to do.