Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Alea jacta est (as Goscinny would say)

Well, that's it - I no longer work for a PAYE employer. From now I have to keep my own accounts, do my own tax returns, and most importantly do the legwork to make sure that I've got enough work every month to pay the bills and keep my skills up to date.

A couple of people have asked whether it feels exciting to be giving up a permanent job for a more uncertain future. Well, as it's been on the cards for quite a while - I'd sometimes entertained fantasies of doing this in the past - I wouldn't say it's particularly exciting. That may, however, be more to do with the fact that my body's now reminding me that one aspect of the new regime is that I can sleep all I want, and that I should now get used to this by sleeping as much as possible for the next few days. Having been in full-time work for about a decade, this feels like the first real holiday I've ever taken as there's no day set when I have to drop back into the old daily work routine. On the other hand, when trying to get started in business it's very, very silly to just go straight off on holiday so the temptation to, say, fly to Australia or spend a month on a comprehensive exploration of the German railway network has to be resisted. The good news there is that I've been told that if all goes well I might be able to take a proper holiday as early as 2008, so there's that to look forward to.

The big project for the last couple of days has been hacking around trying to produce business cards that ooze professionalism and authority while not being too dull or po-faced. The design's getting there, and I believe that what I'm supposed to do is go around handing them out to everyone I meet once they're printed up. To those who actually know me already and therefore don't need a small piece of card to know who I am, I apologise in advance.

Oh yeah, and I rang the Inland Revenue to register as self-employed, which gave me a nicely warm smug feeling (especially once I found out how much less National Insurance I have to pay until my income gets above a certain level). The next Big Decision is whether or not to register for VAT. It has to be done anyway if I look like turning over more than about £57k over the next year, but some authorities recommend registering anyway as it gives you a Certain Air Of Authority and, let's face it, many places will end up claiming it back against their own VAT return anyway.