#9 - A Question To Change Your Life...

Hey Friends 👋

I hope you're doing well and have had a great week?

This week, I wanted to talk about a question. A question that we all face at some point in our lives and it's a question of which our decision can have huge implications.

"Do we be safe and sensible? Or, do we take a risk and chase our dreams?"

The context we face this question will change from person to person and from situation to situation. Unfortunately, there is no one answer to this question but I want to portray and tell the situation I'm currently in, from which I hope you can learn something.

To those of you who follow me on Twitter (if you're not, why not fix that 😉), you may have seen the tweet I sent out in the last week or two that I'm being made redundant from my job after only 3 months of being in the role.

I could write an entire newsletter edition on my emotions of this easily so I won't go into that here. But, essentially the decision came down to office closures and wanting to relocate me to an office that is 2.5 hours away from my home so approx. 5 hours of commuting per day which is far from ideal in the world we live in post-pandemic.

So, I opted for the redundancy option which means at the end of next year I will be leaving my job and the company of which I've been a part of for 4-years when I leave.

However, there were a few conditions given to me in the redundancy offer. One of which I want to talk about, that is if I secured alternative employment in the company before my leaving date, I would be removed from the redundancy list and could continue working.

This put me in an interesting situation, I knew I was leaving my current role as a Frontend Web Developer regardless of what happened but over the last 3 years I have built up connections throughout the company and some were very interested in me becoming available for employment again.

Now, this is where the question from earlier comes into play. At this point in time, I have essentially been offered a role where office location doesn't matter, I'd get a pay rise and would be safe from redundancy but it's not something I particularly want to do (safe and sensible option). Or, I can take the redundancy money and spend the next year or so building side incomes and trying to become self-employed (risky, dream-chasing option).

Having spent a while thinking about it, I'm going to go for the risky, dream-chasing option and plunge into the unknown of being a business owner.

Why I'm telling this story (other than putting it out there to keep myself accountable), is to hopefully inspire someone to take a similar plunge. For my whole working life so far, I've wanted to be self-employed and have the freedom of being my own boss, but this dream for me has always been that, a dream.

But, now with this opportunity, I can make the dream into reality. Yes, it won't be easy. Yes, it's riskier than full-time employment but ultimately, if it goes well it will be more rewarding and potentially the best thing I've done.

So, to conclude this newsletter edition, I'll leave you with this perfect quote:

"You only got one life. live it." - Nims Purja

Thank you for reading this edition of Sunday Summaries and I look forward to chatting to you again next week if not sooner.

Coner x

🏃‍♂️ What I've Been Doing

This week, it has been full-steam ahead working on the newly redesigned version of the PhyType website. We are now targetting a new niche which I'm passionate about, offering new services and got a new modern design to do it all with.

The website is still an MVP, we don't have a blog, an about page, a services page or an updated changelog page but those are all coming in the near future (see below). For now, we have launched the website and that is a start. I would love your feedback and thoughts on it so please check it out and drop me an email with what you think by replying to this newsletter. 😀

💬 Quote Of The Week

"Fear of failure, I thought, will never be our downfall as a company. Not that any of us thought we wouldn’t fail; in fact we had every expectation that we would. But when we did fail, we had faith that we’d do it fast, learn from it, and be better for it."

Buy the book on Amazon

📺 What I've Enjoyed

I'm still working my way through the two books I mentioned in last week's newsletter these are:

• The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun by Gretchen Rubin
• Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker

But, I've also added a new book to the list (I think I've developed a habit of starting new books before finishing the old ones. 😅), this book is Things to Make and Do in the Fourth Dimension by Matt Parker, it's been a good read so far and I look forward to reading more of it.

Outside of the book world, I'm still hooked on Formula 1: Drive To Survive, the drama does pull you in...

And, finally, we have the new Netflix documentary which I quoted earlier: 14 Peaks: Nothing Is Impossible. It's a great watch and it's really inspiring, definitely recommend watching it if you get the chance. Although maybe not if you're not a fan of heights and the thought of climbing 14 mountains all above 8km...

🎯 Next Weeks Targets / Goals

This is a new section of the newsletter for this week but I thought it would be good to include to give you all an idea of what I'm working on and to help me keep myself accountable by doing a weekly review of the things I want to accomplish.

This coming week (06/12 - 12/12), my goals are:

1. Complete the redesign of the changelog page on phytype.com
2. Add the blog page to phytype.com
3. Add the about us page to phytype.com
4. Start creating content on Twitter again (thinking one per day)
5. Keyword research for the first blog post on phytype.com

Let's see how these tasks go and I look forward to reviewing them with you next week with a status on each one and if I failed, what I learned and how to improve next time.

Enjoyed This Newsletter?

If you have enjoyed this edition and want to see more of my content please consider checking out my various socials below:

• Twitter
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• LinkedIn

Questions

If you have a question you'd like me to ask me then I'd ask you to consider publically tweeting me it so others may be able to learn from it. However, I understand not all questions are suitable for the public domain in which case you can email me at hey@conermurphy.com

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