I don’t really see myself actually retiring in the sense that one who reaches a certain age quits working. This is probably why I have never really considered retirement as part of my future plans. If I told you what both my wife, Brenda are currently doing in our lives, you would likely say we are working two full-time careers, even if we happen to be working for ourselves.
That’s the ways it has been for at least the past year. Brenda has been spending a lot of time in the kitchen and I have been spending a lot of time upstairs in the home office writing. We both realize that what we are doing are perfect fits for our skills and commitment levels. You could say we are probably doing what we should be doing with our lives at this point. JamBusters! This is the specialty food product line we developed in 2014. Brenda has a knack for creating some pretty awesome jellies, jams and salsas and this has really taken off. Our original approach was to sell the produces from our downtown storefront location on Bridge Street in our hometown of Princeton, British Columbia. That worked out for the first little while. Eventually, JamBusters! took over the front entrance to our office. When we closed the downtown business in mid-2016, JamBusters! was already in the process of establishing a regular vending schedule. Without the storefront we shifted to vending as often as we could. In August 2017 we added vending at the Oliver Indoor Flea Market in Oliver, BC on weekends. The regular exposure, combined with a few key seasonal outdoor and indoor vending events has helped to elevate the JamBusters! brand to a full-time job for Brenda who still makes each and every product by hand in our kitchen. Summertime is intense with all the produce ripening at about the same time so inventory gets expanded and replenished at this time. Looseink Freelance Ninja I launched my ghostwriting career in early 2014 to help increase our household income when things slowed down with the newspaper. I quickly gained a handful of clients and cultivated business through them and actively pursued other writing jobs. I started writing full-time in September 2016 as the newspaper had been closed by this time and freed up some time. Over the course of the next year I built my clientele to the point where I had been hired as a staff writer for two different marketing firms and had several other regular customers. Instead of writing a few days a week, I had built the flow of business up to the point where some weeks I am writing every day. My plan is to keep it to no more than five days a week when possible. Where’s The Semi-Retirement Part? That’s a good question. We were too busy going through our midlife career changes to slow down, I guess. Regardless, the home-based businesses we have give us a lot of freedom, even if it doesn’t sound that way. As long as both of us stay organized, we can shuffle our workload to the point where we can get partial days off to focus on other things that need to be done. To me, that’s what semi-retirement looks like. I know I’d rather keep doing this.
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AuthorMy name is George Elliott. I have been in the Media Industry since 1978. I spent 23 years in Broadcasting and worked in a total of six different radio stations located in southern British Columbia Canada during my career. In 2000 I switched gears and moved into the Print Media Industry at a small town, local weekly newspaper. In 2004 I bought the paper and operated it with my wife, Brenda until July 2016 when we closed it. I launched a freelance web content and article writing business from my home in January 2014. Archives
April 2021
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