I feel like I have three full-time jobs. In addition to my day job and I’m working another 20 to 30 hours a week trying to get a nonprofit makerspace started in Rochester NY. My wife and I are also taking care of her father, a widower, whose needs constant care because of failing health. And we’re helping to take care of a daughter and her family. She’s just had surgery for the second time this year to repair a heart valve.
So I’m tired and stressed, but not nearly as much as my wife, who shoulders most of the burden of taking care of family members. I help too, but I mostly take care of our pets and our granddaughter. She is a genuine saint because but she has continued to be very supportive of the makerspace. She understands that I can’t stop working on it because many people are now counting on me to follow through with what I started.
I launched the website for the Rochester Makerspace in mid-May and we now have many supporters, seed money, tools and a dedicated group of volunteers. We still haven’t rented a space but we’re actively looking for the right one. I expect that our doors will be open within the next couple of months and maybe as soon as a few weeks.
I’ll be even busier for a while when that happens. Although I expect my workload to taper off as we figure out the best ways to manage the space. The health problems of my father-in-law and stepdaughter will also end. So there’s a good chance you’ll see me regularly working on MachinistBlog again someday.
If you’re wondering, the CNC router I’ve been building for more than a year is still not finished, although I’m continuing to work on it. I obviously don’t have much spare time and when I do I’m usually so tired that I’m either unproductive or I make stupid mistakes.
But I’ll bet money that it’ll get finished because it’s going to have a home in the makerspace and there are others who will help me with it.
Thank you Mikey and Roger for answering the questions that Machinistblog’s visitors leave in the comments or on the forum.
Rob, my best wishes to you and your family during what sounds like a really stressful period.
Your blog is still helping folks even though you’re busy. Given what you’re going through I would say a blog is rather low on the list of important things.
Mikey
I was wondering if you’d be interested in us offering you content for you blog for your readers? I understand that producing fresh and original content for a blog on a regular basis can be a time consuming job so we are happy to provide relevant content for your readers from our professional in house copywriters. All I would ask in return is that you allow us to place a link in the text to link back to our site.
If this is something that you might be interested in then please feel free to contact me. I can be contacted on this email address if you do have any questions.
If not, thanks for your time and keep up the good work!
Rob, I know what you are going through. All the family issues, plus a new business, plus the stress of running a website can really take its toll. I passed the torch to someone else to run the site, the stress was burning me out. Having a new business is very exciting stuff. I wish you well with all you are doing.
How does someone sign up to this forum? I can see where you sign in if you are a member but not how to get a membership.
Fidel, I’m sorry, we were getting clobbered by spammers and so I temporarily turned off new user registrations because that usually gets rid of them. But I forgot to turn it back on after a week or so. It’s fixed and you just need to register using the link at the top of the left sidebar.