Dark Days
Recently I was asked by a student to fill in a questionnaire on what it’s like running a company and what sort of challenges I’m presented with. At first my mood was very much like the drawing in of the early nights; dark, and my inital thoughts were that it’s a pretty thankless task for the most part.
We've been trading for 6 years and we’ve had a bumpy ride at times but during the course of the questionnaire I started to reflect on all the positive times we had. It’s very easy at any time to slip into a negative way of thinking. We are constantly faced with challenges that seem to take up our time which seem so unnecessary, yet so necessary.
Challenges...
For example in November (2010) last year we moved for our town centre offices in Derby to offices further out of town. We cancelled our services that we had been using. It wasn’t until August (2011) this year that we’ve finally stopped being chased for money for services after we cancelled the contract, which resulted in a sorry from the company and some money back, but it’s still a drain on time and energy when you are constantly fighting things that are not even issues in the first place. Like the days drawing in, the periods of light gets a little less each day. Everything seems to be more of an issue than it really is. That’s not to say there are real issues, there are, the trick is to keep them to a minimum.
Sleep is overrated anyway, right?
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My baby daughter, Marnie |
Things can become tense because moods are contagious and when you find things are all working against you it does become very difficult to focus on the important things. Recently (2 months ago) my partner gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, so sleep has been a rare thing of late. Even when she does sleep through the night, which to be fair to her she does more often than not, you still have one eye open 'just in case'. Lack of sleep can add to this feeling, and when you’re tired you make mistakes. That said, it just takes that one big thing to go right for everyone's mood to change and things start looking up. Unfortunately, I still had this feeling of extreme exhaustion and was in a dark mood when I started to fill in the questionnaire... |
Back to the beginning...
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To my surprise I started to think about what things were like when I first set up Light Films and what I wanted for the company, what I wanted to achieve. How difficult it was to get jobs in. One question in particular was ‘What are the highlights of your career so far?’ My answer was, ‘There have been so many’ I continued to list some of them, but there are many varied and exciting things that we’ve been involved in; if you’d have told me 6 years ago about all the things I would achieve, I’d have been over the moon. This doesn’t mean I'm satisfied with where we are, of course I want to push forward and do more and I think having the drive to keep going (which is vital especially in the financial climate we are in at the moment) is essential. So, whilst filling in the questionnaire I was reminded that there is so much I have to be thankful for and so much to be proud of and I'm hopeful that there is still so much to aim for and even as the days draw and everything gets darker there is still so much to be positive and about and, as with winter, the dark days will pass. |
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This blog was written by our Managing Director, Tom Wadlow. To get in touch with Tom, This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .
