Hiya Hvert,

Your entrepreneur friends sounds awesome, and very grounded and smart! I love people like that! What he said makes a lot of sense... what do you think? Do you feel like you can approach it like that? (Or if it makes you nervous, like it might be good practice?) The way he put it sounds very empowering to me, very much along the lines of figuring out what you need and saying it, respectfully, but transparently (ok - now *I* sound like a cross between a therapist and my synergistic boss! ) But, you know what I mean?

I also think... with regards to the craziness and the mixed messages... do you think that getting to that place of "personal power" would help deal with some of that? What you wrote made me think that... I'm the same way, I can't deal with the craziness, but part of that (I think?) is because I'm not really "stable" inside. So craziness outside makes me feel crazy and spinning and uncertain inside too. But, some people seem to have a lot of internal stability. If I had that, I wonder if the outer craziness would bother me less, because I'd have my inner stability to help me feel OK, secure, and sane. Then, I think it would be possible to go into a situation like this, see the craziness, but also see what needs to be done and work towards making that happen! Now, the $24,000,000 question... can one actually *get* (develop, learn, ???) that inner stability - or is it just something where you either have it or you don't?

(Sorry if I sound a bit nuts, too much sugar today! And it's freezing here, so I'm actually shivering a little!)

I'm not sure why that guy is still asking if you're interested? Maybe he's picking up on your disinterest in your replies and is trying to figure it out? Maybe he's busy enough that he's hoping you'll drop out, so he can let the whole thing drop and not be blamed for it?

That's a good point about thinking of myself as "on retainer". Sorry if I forgot to reply to this part earlier, but I can't really just go off and do my own thing - my boss tends to be very spontaneous, so I might get a call or email at any moment asking me to please hop on a call (that started 5 minutes ago) or to call him for something. I do stuff around the house and on my home computer, but I stay near my work computer so I can keep an eye on my email. And, I'm trying to get caught up on the awful mandatory training that we have to keep up with (ugh).

Anyway, it looks like I'm about to be super busy again. An old project that we got started and handed off to another team is coming back to us (because they couldn't do it! ha!) and it's a huge one, and I'm getting pulled back into it. I enjoyed working on it last time, but it's a TON of work, and I'm not sure exactly what we're going to be doing this go-around. I'm going in for a meeting tomorrow to get updated on it, so we'll see. It's better than being bored, and better than some of the stuff they had me doing late last year!

Take care!