Apologies for my scarcity of entries lately. Life has been tough and busy lately. My day job has gotten hugely demanding, and I’m on the verge of launching my business. Life has become all about work at the moment, and my sleep levels, social life and exercise regime have suffered. I keep thinking surely this is only short-term, but the truth is, I cannot see an end in sight: until this business becomes self-funding, I have no choice but to work these crazy hours.

The hardest thing to deal with is lack of human contact outside of work hours. I live alone, which I love most of the time, except when all I do after work is go home and work til late. It can get a little lonesome.

The next hardest thing to deal with is the physical pain. No matter what you do, sitting in front of a computer for 16 hours a day, all week, is going to hurt your body. My back, neck, shoulders, and head are pretty much in a permanent state of anguish. I’d love to see a physiotherapist, but that requires time and money, neither of which I have in abundance at the moment.

So, I just find myself willing to be bestowed strength from my ancestors, hardy Cuban peasants and Spanish labourers, who lived tough lives without complaint. My life can hardly be called tough, comparatively. So I work long hours and my back hurts. I also live in a beautiful city, have a lovely home, and am surrounded by supportive friends and family. When my site becomes successful, all this will have been worthwhile, and even will enhance the value of the story. This is what I have to keep reminding myself!

For the last few days I have been in issue logging mode. Days and days of testing, describing issues, thinking analytically about flow and logic and aesthetics.

Now, my beleaguered developers have an avalanche of issues to deal with (bless them, they are getting through them valiantly), and I can turn my attention to all the writing for the site I have put off til now.

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I’m only relatively new to this whole blogging community business. True, I have been a personal blogger for quite some time (see my personal blog at FoodFictionFabulousness), but this almost professional process of regularly visiting a blog, commenting on other people’s blogs, and building a community is relatively novel to me.

But over the past few months, I have been lucky enough to have a few regular visitors, and although I have never met these people, their words of encouragement and advice tickle me with pleasure with each message they leave.

So, Val from Digital Labs, Alex from Microsmeta, Dennis and Jason from Thought and Theory, Thor, Lisa from Just Be, Leisa from Disambiguity, and many others, just a word of thanks! You really put a smile on my face.

Well, I finally heard back from the seed capital fund I had requested funding from. I guess unsurprisingly, they declined. Their reasons were that they didn’t have enough evidence of market validation and limited proof that I had the experience to execute on the plan. But of course, come see us later when you are more successful.

I guess its unsurprisingly because the Australian VC market for internet companies isn’t as buoyant or risk-taking as the US market. And, it was the first company I approached, it would have been a stroke of inordinate luck if I had been granted funding on my first attempt.

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