13 October 2026
This is one of the more challenging periods of my life.
For nearly forty years of my working life, I always had a job. And, Alhamdulillah, they were generally good, well-paying jobs. From the time I left school, work and income were almost constants in my life.
I worked. I was paid. I looked after myself and my family. I did not spend much time worrying about where the next month’s income would come from.
That changed after I left my government job in November 2023.
I later had a five-month consultancy assignment with the city council, and I have been trying to build something through The Happiness Club. But I am discovering something about myself that I had perhaps never needed to confront before:
I know how to work for someone. I am still learning how to create work for myself.
My mind has been wired for decades around employment. Someone gives me a responsibility. I perform it well. At the end of the month, I receive a salary.
Entrepreneurship is completely different.
I have ideas. I have experience. I know I can speak, facilitate, coach, write and help organisations think differently about happiness, leadership and psychological safety.
But how do I turn all of that into sustainable income? That is something I still have not figured out.
And not earning consistently affects me more deeply than the financial numbers themselves.
There is something uncomfortable about depending on my wife for things that I would previously have paid for without thinking twice. I do receive some income here and there, but it is not yet sufficient or predictable.
Perhaps what weighs on me most is the uncertainty.
What happens tomorrow?
At the same time, I need to keep this uncertainty in perspective.
- Alhamdulillah, I have a home.
- There is food on the table.
- The bills are being paid.
- My wife has an income.
I am not suffering or deprived of my basic needs. In fact, compared with the difficulties many people experience, I have much to be grateful for.
The lifestyle may not be the same as the one I had become accustomed to. Perhaps it does not need to be.
Maybe this is one of the tests of this stage of my life.
Perhaps this season is asking something different of me.
- Not only to produce.
- Not only to earn.
- Not only to build something.
- But also simply to be present.
There is another part of this journey that I cannot ignore. I have previously gone through anxiety and depression and was treated with medication for several years. More recently, I experienced another difficult period.
So I know I need to pay attention to my mind as I navigate all these changes. Today, however, I do not want to solve everything. I simply want to acknowledge where I am.
I am moving from a lifetime of employment into something I have never really done before.
- I am learning to create my own work.
- I am learning to live with less certainty.
- I am learning to receive support after spending much of my life being able to provide.
- I am trying to protect my own wellbeing.
And I am trying to trust that there is meaning even in a season whose destination I cannot yet see.
Alhamdulillah for what is still here.
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