Has anyone else noticed how bad customer service has gotten? Companies have no problem taking your money but when their product or service doesn’t work, it takes five times as long to get it resolved. They also have no problem instantly taking your money yet somehow it takes “7-10 business days” to get your refund. It’s only getting worse.

I remember a job that I once had to stand up a call center in Cebú, Philippines. It was a good thing my manager had me go there because the place was a boiler room. The computers used were out of date, unpatched operating systems, ancient hardware, and the facility had inadequate internet bandwidth. I felt bad for the agents and the misery was palpable. I blame US corporate greed for this. What’s more is that the company that owned the call center was based in the US.

If my business ever gets big enough to need dedicated CS agents, I am not going to go the way of outsourcing this. I’m not feeding the call center industry. I’m not going to beat up my customers and frustrate them, even if it means I will ultimately earn less money. My customers are deserving of the best support possible. As a consumer, I hate dealing with poor support.

Corporations don’t even really care about the customer. You’re just a number. Okay, I’ll bite, they care about you until they have your money. Once they have your money, you’re a burden. That’s no way to run a business.

This morning I am feeling physically lousy. The nausea resulting from taking Ozempic has reached the point of intolerable. I will have to have this discussion with my doctor. It will be time to try a new GLP-1 drug. I am not taking this for weight loss but for being an actual type 2 diabetic. Happily I have lost a lot of weight as a result of taking the medication.

Today I have to go into work for a 4p-12a shift. I am not looking forward to it because my tummy is doing back flips. Well, at least I will have done my required shifts and I won’t have to go in again until Thursday of next week. Of course there will always be call outs so I can optionally pick up extra shifts. I don’t know how much I am going to feel like picking any up though.

I am left sort of wondering if this is it. I am finding myself questioning whether or not I should continue down the road of self-employment. I don’t know if this is depression and anxiety talking or I am just objectively questioning what I am doing. A large part of me feels like I should just keep on marching with this idea. Do I set expectations or simply goals? I think goals are the way to go.

I did manage to get some work on building a WordPress and WooCommerce theme last night. At this point, any work accomplished is better than none at all. I am starting to get some ideas and run with them. I do feel good about that. I just wish my concentration levels would be better. Concentration is hard for me because I feel so icky most days.

I’m tired of having to rely on public transportation. I’m tired of the disruptive and rude passengers. I’m tired of the people getting on intoxicated. It makes me late for work because inevitably police have to get involved to yank the person off the bus.

But I think most of all that I’m tired of being poor. I’m tired of the worry and tired of being punished by society. Being poor is not my fault. I’ve had a series of life setbacks that put me in this condition. I’ve done nothing wrong whatsoever.

America gives automatic undue credit to the wealthy because money is the new “god.” Why is it that wealth is so revered? I mean look at Donald Trump. If he isn’t proof that you can have money and still be absolutely low class, I don’t know what is anymore. I also want to know why America is generally anti-education.

I’m sick of the myths and mystique surrounding being wealthy. So many of the wealthy are not deserving of their money because they exploited people. They were not paid fairly for their labor. I’m just pissed off!

I had another difficult night sleep-wise. I think I need to get some more melatonin because that supplement worked very well. I will pick up some this weekend. When I woke up, I discovered my mom had tried to call me several times. My mom is now situated in her apartment at the memory care program. I am truly worried for her because she definitely has sundowning syndrome as it seems her symptoms are worse at night. I will give mom a call later today.

I don’t really want to go to work this afternoon but I need the money. I need more money coming in the door so I can afford to keep Denisse and I afloat. I want Denisse to have some nice small luxuries so I will have to work (unfortunately) harder. I am not a fan of hard work but one of smart work. Working hard isn’t necessarily smart. Smart work is finding the means to be more efficient with my time.

I am not adverse to working long hours though. I would just like my efforts to be more personally beneficial. The only way to make this happen though is to work towards ownership. When one has ownership of the means, they ultimately earn more money and do it smartly. Unless one is at the executive level of a company, they are just a mere cog in the machine having to accept scraps of money for work performed.

Personally, I am absolutely tired of being impoverished in a country that punishes poverty. It takes 2-3x longer to get basic needs taken care of. Trips to doctor’s appointments and the grocery store end up taking half of the usable day. My exit strategy is all about starting and running my own business. I want more of my time to directly benefit me.

I have no motivation for today but it’s not a depressed feeling. I feel so utterly relaxed that I just want to ride it out at home. I know that some of this feeling is the after effects of a THC buzz last night. I’m not complaining and it’s nice to feel this way every once in a while. But I’m going to need to shelve the Delta 9 for a while. I’m using it more than I want.

I don’t have any grand plans for today. I’m thinking about heading to the library after I run a few errands. Perhaps I’ll get a few light tasks accomplished that will be kind of fun. I really do enjoy working on my business so it will be time well spent.

It’s a cold day in March too. The wind makes things quite blustery. I wish it were not so cold. I just want to wrap myself in a blanket like a burrito. That’ll be for tonight.

I decided to pick up a shift offered to me this morning because it is nice and easy; somewhat chill. I need the money anyways. I figure I might as well get paid and work on my business at the same time. I did get my goal accomplished to stand up a development container for my laptop.

I even have my technology stack architected so I am ready to go once I can get something at least minimally viable designed in WordPress and WooCommerce. Before I can do that, I still need something basic like a logo. I went back to the drawing board on the logo. I didn’t like what I had designed originally. Normally I tend to be decisive so I don’t know where all this indecision is coming from.

I really want to have something minimally viable in time for April 1st. I want to make some tangible progress here and I am not simply stuck at “readiness.” It’s time to start lining up customers and making things happen. It would be great if I could bring in a tidy average sum of 25,000.00 per month. I think once I am able to do that, I can consider taking on W2 employees.

I feel a bit better now than I did when I woke up. It was good to pick up the extra shift today. That’s more money to invest in my business.

I need a minimally viable launch for my business website and e-commerce store. In order to begin this process though, I need a business logo. I really like the idea of a lotus flower with hex blue and hex green petals. I’d like to see a variation with some highlights and shadowing on the petals as well. I might have to upgrade my ChatGPT to the paid account in order to accomplish this.

After evaluating some AI tools, I’ve found both ChatGPT and Claude to be useful. ChatGPT is better at generating images and voices. Claude is better for vibe coding. I think I might have to have Claude build me some custom business tools centered around my needs or at least help me develop them. I need a good development environment as well.

Even if I just set up the development environment that would be good. I don’t know how much my brain will nominally handle today. I feel somewhat down in the dumps and tired. I know it is Saint Patrick’s Day and part of me would like to go out and have a little fun, but as I get older, I like relaxing and recharging at home. I am becoming more of a home body. I’ve seen a lot and done a lot in my life. Now I am starting to appreciate simplicity.

So maybe I set less grand goals and simply set up the development environment for the website and e-commerce platforms. This would be more easily achieved and I can at least feel like I got something accomplished.

I’m having a very hard time staying awake today. My concentration is just all over the place and I’m falling asleep at my desk. Thankfully, I only have 2.5 hours left and then I can head home. It’s really tough when you hate your job like I do. I would have thought that this would be lighting a fire under my feet to get this business launched. Instead, I feel full of ideas and inertia.

I’m laughing about it but things are happening too slowly for my liking. This is happening because I’m not spending enough time and not making progress. I want to make progress and wish I could bust out my laptop right here and now. I also feel a tad stupid from last night. I had a bit of fun with Denisse and I might be paying for that today.

Well, point of fact, I might not be as stupid as I think because I did figure out how to utilize AI for market research. AI has been so helpful with the planning side of business. I even learned, courtesy of AI, that I was underestimating my own capabilities and underpricing my services. AI even helped me to come up with a good pricing structure.

I might even go so far as to claim that I feel more confident about my ability to offer these services. I would love to get to the point where I’m at 1 million per month in revenue. But this is probably a dream. At least I still have dreams.

I am actually finding myself not minding this Monday morning shift much as it is going to be relatively easy money. The hardest part of the whole affair is simply waking up early. I would like to spend some time this morning on brainstorming and market research. I want to get out of this hole that I am in so now is the time to work diligently and smartly. Sadly, discrimination at the age of 40+ is real. Thus, I don’t see myself ever getting back into technology as a W2 employee.

I will never get why there is such a presumption that the older worker is so incapable. What I can do is parlay my technology experience into a viable business that is mostly unrelated to technology. I don’t really want to do much in the way of technology consulting, yet I don’t want to limit myself either. I think I’d rather be a strategy consultant than in the troubleshooting role; the 30,000 foot view. I will play the role of virtual CIO if I offer anything in the technology realm altogether.

I am ambivalent about technology and it’s only really fun when I can do things like experiment. That was one of the reasons why I originally considered starting an IT training business. Now I remember why I nixed it …. I don’t really have the patience necessary to teach. It just dawned on me that I have failed to consider that I could always hire somebody to do the teaching. I could create the curriculum and do the 30,000 foot view.

Sometimes I wonder if being autistic gets in my way of coming up with ideas. I find myself getting mired in minutiae; almost like being fixated. I have to remind myself to look at the big picture almost constantly. So am I now back to considering teaching again!? My brain is all over the place right now. I want to pick a direction and go with it. I don’t even fully understand or remember why I nixed teaching. Aaarrrggghhh!

Too much to think about! 😆

I am in the phase where I am starting to consider technology and architecture stacks for my business. Below is some of my brainstorming on the subject matter. I did get myself set up with a VoIP line and pretty cool number in my area code, 302. Obviously I am not sharing the number until I am fully ready to go. I don’t need the spam and robocalling just yet.

I think I have the rest of my technology stack worked out. The underlying operating system will be AlmaLinux 10. Since I am going to be small, the architecture can remain very simple. I’ll have two virtual servers, one to power my internal workflow and the other strictly for the website and e-commerce. I don’t expect to do a large volume on it as I will only be offering four services, so for now, simplicity is key.

So the entire stack for the website and e-commerce platform will be LEMP or Linux, eNGINX, MariaDB, and PHP with Valkey. For my internal processes, I will most likely go the route of LAMP or Linux, Apache, MariaDB, and PHP with Valkey. This will be robust enough for my needs. Again, I want to “Keep It Simple Stupid.” The key will be getting services restored quickly when they go down. I will continue to use Linux on the desktop.