About a month ago, I left my old job and went off to do something different – the same job but also managing my own marketing. It’s one of these big stupid endeavours for which I am famous (such as the story of how I moved to Prague). There’s larger part of me is absolutely certain I am doing and have done the right thing. There is a smaller part of me which regrets the loss of the old days.
For the last 6 years, I was a free tour guide working under the umbrella of another man. I paid him a marketing fee. He provided me with people. Those people I entertained and then they paid me more than the marketing fee and all was good. It might sound a bit like a con and exploitation but it works out really quite good for the guide on most occasions.
The thing I have come to understand in the last month is that marketing can be hard and quite boring. It won’t be lucrative for me till the guests start rolling in and that will take a little longer. The good season has not yet started.
But it was hard to let go of the guys at City and move on to my own thing at Street Historians. The group chat was a thing of delight. The level of banter and conversation was the sort of low key socialisation which makes work quite good for mental health. It was cool to have people I could chat with about various issues in guiding or complaints we had about the marketing manager which we were all too scared to tell him unless he cut our shifts.
Hopefully once I expand people won’t live in dread of me.
When I left we had a leaving night out and they made me a card with lots of nice sentiments in it. I will treasure it till my children inevitably destroy it. Now it’s about moving on.
Often it gets said, people don’t quit jobs they quit managers. It’s just a shame that I also quit having a regular stream of people to talk to and guests to entertain for a while. Hopefully time will show I made the right decision.
The writer of this piece is growing day by day.
Describe a phase in life that was difficult to say goodbye to.
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