Rejected a Job Offer

Recently, I was contacted by the boss of a company where I used to work for. He actually asked for my help to work on a web portal and offered a reasonable pay for my services, making me slightly hesistant to reject him at first. After all, I think he is sincere in his approach and that the job market is really bad currently, so I should consider myself blessed that a job came looking for me, instead of the other way round. However, I decided that it is not really what I want to do and sent a SMS to reject the offer after two days of contemplation.

I received a call the next day, prompting for the reason and to be honest, I was quite stuck at how to reply. There are quite a few reasons prompting me to reject the offer ranging from pay, career prospects and a touch of uncertainty. Well, pay is not really the issue here, since I am sure that I will be able to negotiate a higher pay if I am really interested in the job. Anyway, I did not reject him fully this time round and decided to help him speed things up by helping him out in some tasks.

I went down to the office and got a view of what he needed to be done, thereafter offering to take up three tasks. He asked me how long I will take to complete those tasks and he mentioned something like weeks. I think I shocked him when I said I will complete two of the tasks within a day. Two days later, I worked on those tasks and I was taken aback. The system that I had been working on two years ago had been totally transformed and no longer looked like what I had started. The programming and design portions are merged together, making the coding look more illegible than it already is. I don’t know if it is good or bad, but it is very different from my own style.

Fortunately though, my mind did not suffer under the confusion and I was still able to work efficiently on the tasks that I was allocated. In fact, I finished all three tasks before the day ended and it was way faster than my boss, the other programmer and myself expected. At this point, I thought of a website that I intended to work on for myself. It has already been two months since I conceived the concept, but I have barely even worked on it other than ensuring that the main technology works.

During this period of time, I am willing to help my friends out with their website, work for my past bosses on their websites and automation of reports… all for Free, yet I have spent very limited time doing stuff for myself. It irks me to think that I am procrastinating on my own websites, but completed my friend’s website the day he sent me his files. Well, to be fair, I have been quite busy these two months to wrap up on a few things, but I think there is definitely enough time in between to have finished my own website by now.

I wonder if my procrastination is brought about by my inconfidence in the website in generating revenue. I wonder if it’s because I am afraid to face the results after the website launches that cause my inaction. I wonder if deep down inside, I just want to find a stable job, since I am always more committed in working for others than myself. Actually, I don’t wonder about that… if I can get a job in risk management, I would definitely go for it.

However, times are bad now and getting into risk management is difficult. I also don’t want to be stuck in a job that I do not like, so I decided to work full-time on developing my own websites until October. If I can’t generate a full-time income on autopilot by then, I will go back to the workforce.