Dancing the Limbo
Dancing the Limbo, Again
I started writing this at Devoxx Belgium in Antwerp, and held it until the conference was over. The conference was great, and I met so many people, even though starting those conversations felt strange and hard. The overall spirit made up for it.
My talk went well. I covered everything I wanted to say, but I was rushing, out of breath, and more nervous than usual. Then the audience feedback came in and confirmed it: too fast, and it looked like I was nervous. That part is true, and reading it from someone else still hit differently than feeling it on stage.
What I didn’t expect was what it set off afterwards. One piece of feedback about pacing, and suddenly I was asking bigger questions. Is this really what I’m good at? Should I continue with it? And underneath that, the question I’ve been circling since I went independent: is self-employment the right way forward, or should I go back into employment?
I know this feeling. It’s the same back-and-forth I wrote about in Dancing the Limbo, just wearing different clothes.
Part of me wants to rush through the uncertainty, accept the path I chose, and stop re-evaluating commitments I made only weeks before. Another part says I’m at the very beginning, with a lot to learn and a lot to look at, and that maybe the right move is to step back, explore other business relationships, and see what actually fits before treating anything as final.
I don’t have an answer, and I’m not writing this to reach one. Talking it through and writing it down is how I work on it, and the feeling loosens when I get it out of my head and look at it from the outside.
That’s where I am for now.