That's right, my little baby is on her way out. The hard drive makes a constant whirring noise, it's full to overflowing and begging for a clean out, the CD-ROM drive is a goner and has been for months, the monitor has been afflicted with an odd flashing mannerism and from time to time it all just stops and forces me to reboot.

And what have I done to rectify the problem?

Nothing. Not a darn thing.

It's not like I don't need a working computer, our website is mostly in my hands for the next few weeks while my business partner is a 12 hour flight away taking a very well earned break from work. Should my computer crash we're basically, how do I put this? We're basically stuffed. I don't have enough spare cash for a new computer in a hurry, there IS no contingency plan in place and without my computer I am out of business.

I plod along in some vain hope that it will miraculously fix itself, which I know is not bordering on stupidity but all the way there. Yet I plod, reboot, plod, reboot, plod, reboot ....

Why-oh-why do we persist in cutting our own throats in business? I should be setting aside a weekend to work on my little baby and fix her back up, after all she's certainly been faithful. At the very least I might consider replacing her CD-ROM drive so that she may thank me by working nicely for a few more days before crashing.

I speak to home based business owners often and it would appear that I am not alone in this self defeating affliction of 'hoping it will go away'. There are some things about our businesses we love and other things that repulse us.

I hate, I'm using the word hate here, I HATE maintaining my computer so that she may work well for me at least for a little of this century. I cannot stand going through files and working out what I do and don't need on her, I can't abide disk scans or backups or defrags and all that stuff that causes my main tool of trade to function normally. Or at least at a standard which means that I don't have time to make a cup of tea and have a cigarette before she's finished performing a basic task for me.

While I hate it, I'm going to pay the price for neglecting it very soon. In my future I see myself pressing the on button and hearing her grunt and splutter as she tries, despite all the odds stacked against her, to start up and then BAM! She's going to kick the silicon bucket and retreat to the great cyber heaven in the sky. I'll be left with a modem, a scanner and a printer that doesn't work (another of my hope-it-will-go-away casualties).

The smart thing would be to either a) bite the bullet and do what has to be done or b) pay someone else to bite the bullet and do what has to be done. Of course, that's easy to say -- but why do so many of us not follow that simple advice?

What have you got around the office today that just HAS to be done? As business owners we have to attend to these tasks, else where will our business be?

If you don't get to it -- lets do lunch, since we'll have nothing else to do anyway.

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