I love running my own business. I love calling the shots. I love being able to focus on what I want AND turn on a dime if that’s what I choose. I love the support structures I have in place. I love picking my clients, picking my projects, picking my partners. I am accountable and responsible for my actions and outcomes. Liberating. I love being the boss of me. In life and in business.

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Last night, I was cutting out some French words to be used as flash cards for my daughter’s reading. I had asked her teacher for this resource earlier in the day and he complied, giving me handouts with words of varying length and instructing me to glue them onto construction paper (for sturdiness) and then cut them out.

I settled in on the couch, intent on the task while sipping my shiraz and absent-mindedly watching husband and daughter wrestle. It looked like fun. After a time, I noticed I was starting to get a blister on my thumb and my hand was beginning to cramp. I had been at this for a good 25 minutes. I was growing weary and a little agitated. Only half-way through the pages. The laughter of husband and child started to grate on my nerves. How come THEY get all the fun while I get all the drudgery?

I looked down at my perfect little piles of perfectly cut paper.

And stopped. Then this thought bore down on me:

Who the hell cared if the words were cut along the dotted lines with surgical precision?

How neatly they were cut would have zero bearing on my daughter’s ability to read “salon”. Who was REALLY calling the shots here? And if it was ME, why was I being such a tight-ass about LINES for the love-a? And what was all this type-A crap costing me?

I was being the world’s worst boss.

I chuckled at the absurdity of it all and proceeded to hack up the rest of the pages in minutes and joined in the wrestling fun.