When It’s Time for Trains, You Get Trains

It is an axiom of engineering that “when it’s time for trains, you get trains.” In other words, when the conditions for a technology are right, it emerges, often simultaneously in multiple places.

I sometimes think about this in more personal terms, that when the time is right, the right thing will come along.

I have spent several years banging away at the idea of becoming self employed, to get myself out of the nine to five rat race, but there was always something holding me back.

The largest thing holding me back was me.

I have serious mental health problems, which went undiagnosed for four decades. Forget seeking a diagnosis, I refused to even admit, to myself, that I had a problem.

It is only now, after a couple of years of hard work to learn to deal with my depression, to survive, live and even thrive with it, that I find myself gaining traction on this.

I noodled around several ideas, took a bunch of courses, but none of them said, “This is it Andrew.” At least not until I returned to one of my earlier ideas, freelance writing.

Now, that I’ve finally started client work, I am looking ahead to the next step, building a business out of freelancing. And I am working my way through the audio book of Mike Kim’s You Are the Brand.

I’m only a couple of chapters in, and already bunch of the advice he gives is things I’m already doing.

It’s time for a train, and I’m building a train.