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In this episode of Moni Talks Tech, Moni takes a moment of reflection and realises that working for herself has given her so much more freedom in her life.
Moni Talks Tech (and other things) is a show hosted by Monika Rabensteiner, a weird Austrian lady, who went on the journey to start her own business and is now here to tell the tale. But not only that: she will be caressing your earbuds with tips and tricks around tech tools and design - everything you need to make your online business work smarter not harder - and look better in the process.
Welcome to Moni Talks Tech and Other Things, the podcast where service based business owners and coaches like you can walk away with simple tips and tricks to level up your business and defeat the ultimate end boss, your dreaded tech set up. Are you ready for this then? Let's go.
Hello. Hello. Welcome to another episode of Moni Talks Tech, and this is the last episode before we all hopefully fall into a big old food coma and won't raise our heads until the new year. It's the episode before Christmas. And while you might not be celebrating Christmas, maybe it's happy Hanukah for you, or maybe you're not celebrating at all, that's totally fine. But I would like to take this time before we all go into a collective again food coma and a phase of quietness to reflect a bit on what has been going on this year and to share with you some revelations that I had, especially in the last one or two months.
As a business owner, I feel sometimes we totally lose track of what is our life, what is other people's lives and how it is supposed to be. I think we always look on Instagram and see all these people who are smashing it or who are claiming that they smash it, who have the perfect work-life balance and everything is working out for them. And you, I mean, I can only speak for myself, but I do think that sometimes in all of this we feel very much less than, even though I don't particularly wanna go out and compare myself to all of these other people because comparison is the thief of joy or whatever, but you just sometimes can't help but think, what the fuck am I doing wrong? Like, why am I up until 3:00 AM in the morning to finish work and everybody else is ending their work at four or they're not even working five days a week? And that I didn't even manage to shower yet , and then I haven't had time to make food and then just eating a bunch of trash and my laundry needs doing and I haven't gotten to around to that yet. So it's just really, really easy to be sitting here and think, oh my God, I'm just failing at this massively.
Which is why I just wanna, number one, bring a bit of attention to the fact that this is all bullshit, we only see only ever see other people's highlight reels, especially on social media and comparing ourselves to that is all bullshit. The other time I saw a reel of someone that I've just been casually following who was just saying the exact same thing, it's like, fuck all of that. Like not everything is a perfect morning routine paired with a short workday or as little workday as possible.
Some of us, or a lot of us are working really hard to do what we gonna do and to live our lives the way we want to. And especially in that regard, sometimes you think, did I make the right choice? Like was it still worth it? Was it worth it to leave security behind and to leave, like I cannot think I can stop thinking about work as soon as I leave the office kind of situation. Was it worth it in the end? And for me, there were always some core bits that I couldn't imagine not having anymore. Like if I want to, I could organise my day to a degree that I can just start work later, go for breakfast with a, with a friend, or just take the day off without having to ask anyone. Obviously that doesn't mean I don't need to inform my clients about the situations like this, but I can just, if I don't feel like it or if something is going on, I can like take half day off without consulting.
Like there's just a certain freedom in all of that. And sometimes in comparison to all the other things that I'm doing all the time, it doesn't seem as big of a turnaround. And this year I realised that it's not as small as I think it is. So especially when I started out in my business, it was more that I was surrounded by people who wanted the same thing, who did the same thing so that we were all in the same kind of boat. And I went from working in a corporate job to working for myself and all of a sudden my entire community and all the people that I had around me, aside from my family, obviously all of the other people were all people who wanted the same thing. So it shifted very quickly into this view of everybody's doing this, so all these people have the same kind of benefits, right?
And it didn't feel like something special anymore. So Q 2020 Q, lockdown q me, finding amazing people on Twitch that I really connected with, building a community outside of of work was really important during that time for me because my brain couldn't handle any more more of that. So I really needed some space that was not work. And Twitch, which is for people who don't know, is a video game platform, a streaming platform where people like stream video games and a lot of other things like chatting, podcasts, irl things, music, there's so much you can find on Twitch. It's not only video games, but it's their core bread and butter basically that people share a gameplay. I used to say, why the fuck would people want to watch other people play video games? But in the end, it's not at all about the gameplay, it's about the people and the community you can connect with there.
And that's what, because I'm that kind of of community person, that's what drew me in and that's what made me stay there. And I met a lot of amazing people who are really, really great friends now. And I just recently, now that everything is opening up again, you start to travel a bit more and you just obviously want to meet with all of them, right? So you realise that, or at least that's something that I've realised is that it is really easy for me to just go somewhere and do things. And it didn't seem like such a big of a thing because the entire people that I've had contact with before in the first like four to five years, that the ones that I connected with, the ones that became really close friends, like my co-host for my other podcast and her fiance, now , those were all people who if they wanted, they can take the time and they can go and travel, they can spend a long period of time elsewhere.
And it is just, was just so, so normal. I was just the one who wasn't doing it because I wasn't not doing it, I was just not doing it to an extent. So I went away for a couple of days, but quite regularly in essence. But anyway, I didn't realise that this is not normal. This is not how other people can live their lives. Other people have a job, they can't just take off one day or they can't just be late or they can't just decide to wake up three hours later than normal because they are too tired or they're not feeling well that day and three hours later won't hurt anyone anyway. So there was a freedom or that kind of freedom. I quite, well I didn't take for granted because I appreciated it a lot, but I didn't know how much I appreciated it until I went and visited a bunch of friends in London.
And obviously you had to organize because everybody doesn't have time during the weekdays. Like they all, everybody needs to actually work, right? So all of a sudden you're like, oh, well that means you just have two days left of the week where you can really like do things during the day. And I never, or it's not that, I never actually realised that, but I definitely have a whole new appreciation of, the life that I chose and the work that I do. And I think it's easy to oversee that sometimes and it's easy to fall into this hole of why am I even doing this? And sometimes everything feels like a massive struggle and that's normal. I think life is just not always rainbows and unicorns and everything's great and whatever but it's the little things that we seem to overlook occasionally during it all, during the stress that we put ourselves through occasionally.
It's quite the epic thing that we're all doing. And I really, really wanted to speak about this a bit just because I think I can't be the only one who sometimes isn't looking at it anymore or is you are so in it for so long and you are working so hard and you start to forget all the nice things and don't see them as much anymore. So I just wanted to also share this with you because maybe you are also sitting there, especially before Christmas, everything is such a stress because everybody wants to end. And so all of a sudden as a freelancer, you're just sitting there and thinking, you need to kind of work double hours to make up for the entire month and stuff. It's so easy to be caught in this stress of closing down and everything is slowing down, so you need to go twice as fast so you can slow down afterwards.
And I know a lot of it is also about organisation on how much stress you really let happen in your business for yourself, but sometimes you just can't avoid it. You can't avoid that. You wanna help everybody be able to have a good holiday season, even if it's sometimes to your own detriment. So yeah, I think before I go off into my holiday time, I wanna wish all of you the absolute best for it as well. I hope you can relax and I hope you actually take the time off for yourselves. And if it's not because you are celebrating anything holiday related, just finishing off the end of the year with some self-reflection I think is sometimes really worth it. Next week's episode will be one of reflection and the things I've learned throughout, 2022 and all the changes I've made during 2022 before we start out with 2023. And the first episode in 2023 is also bringing you a present because that's how we roll. Technically, it should've been this one, shouldn't, shouldn't it, but obviously organisation is not my strong suit. So you will get it at the beginning of the year to start your year off with a bang and just come back on, I guess the 4th of January or whatever the first Wednesday of the year is to get your gift. And I can't wait to see you next week.