Imposter syndrome, self doubt, feelings of doom, am I doing the right thing\u2026 everyone who has taken the plunge to leave employment and go it alone will have had all of these in varying degrees.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2010 when I finally got my redundancy from \u201cthe job\u201d I hated, I just started telling everyone I was a photographer, no longer a software engineer. Nothing actually changed other than my job title in the first few weeks. That\u2019s when you have all those doubts about whether you\u2019re doing the right thing. I didn\u2019t really have sleepless nights, rather LONG days of nothing – literally nothing to do, unless you invent things to do. During those long days, you look at others doing your thing and wonder whether your good enough – and then often conclude that you\u2019re not.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is the time when you really do need a lot of help and encouragement. Help in working out what to fill your time with to get things moving. Encouragement to avoid falling into a whirlpool of self doubt and introspection.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I was lucky to meet some great people early on, especially people running their own businesses and going through the same thing. I\u2019m still friends with most of them now.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One very random phone call just stands out though, and I was reminded of it today when I read some sad news on Facebook.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I\u2019d known Kris Dutson on a website called EPhotozine for many years – just a happy looking hairy guy with a wicked sense of humour. Great landscape photos and some lovely product shots. He was doing pretty much what I would go on to do – make a living doing a mix of photography \u201cstuff\u201d.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The phone rang and I\u2019d no idea who it was, so answered and got this south western accent saying \u201cHello Ade\u201d.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHello\u2026. ?\u201d I replied.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s Kris off Ephotozine – remember me?\u201d
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We\u2019d never met, spoken or really done anything other than enjoy banter on internet forums (remember those?) – so was really weird to actually hear his voice.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Not to go into too much detail, he told me how pleased he was that I\u2019d taken the plunge and gave me lots of tips and encouragement – right at the time I needed it most. You\u2019re never really sure if you\u2019re getting it right, so to randomly hear from someone you look up to, from 300 miles away was amazing – and to hear that what I was doing all looked good was even better.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I think we must have chatted about life, photography, business, Ephotozine and stuff for a good hour before we bid each other farewell. I\u2019m sure you\u2019ve all had those calls where you feel amazing after and it puts you right back on track; this was one of those.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Whenever I\u2019ve seen him on Facebook I always remembered that chat with great fondness and thought what a top, thoughtful bloke he was.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to hear he\u2019s lost his battle with cancer today is incredibly sad. I never met him but I\u2019ll never forget him.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sleep well Kris.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Imposter syndrome, self doubt, feelings of doom, am I doing the right thing\u2026 everyone who has taken the plunge to leave employment and go it alone will have had all of these in varying degrees. In 2010 when I finally got my redundancy from \u201cthe job\u201d I hated, I just started telling everyone I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10459,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rop_custom_images_group":[],"rop_custom_messages_group":[],"rop_publish_now":"initial","rop_publish_now_accounts":{"twitter_22977785_22977785":"","facebook_10157410341118549_123005067715685":""},"rop_publish_now_history":[],"rop_publish_now_status":"pending","_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/MG_7332.jpg",2000,1067,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/MG_7332-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/MG_7332-300x160.jpg",300,160,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/MG_7332.jpg",2000,1067,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/MG_7332-1024x546.jpg",1024,546,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/MG_7332-1536x819.jpg",1536,819,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/04\/MG_7332.jpg",2000,1067,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"McFade","author_link":"https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/author\/admin"},"uagb_comment_info":1,"uagb_excerpt":"Imposter syndrome, self doubt, feelings of doom, am I doing the right thing\u2026 everyone who has taken the plunge to leave employment and go it alone will have had all of these in varying degrees. In 2010 when I finally got my redundancy from \u201cthe job\u201d I hated, I just started telling everyone I was…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10697"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":175727,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10697\/revisions\/175727"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10459"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mcfade.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}