What’s it like being your own boss? Don’t ask me, I’m trying to figure it out.
By John Kass
Saying you want to start your own business is one thing.
But actually doing it is another thing.
I left my job of almost 40 years at the paper I once loved—writing a column for almost 25 years–starting my own business on the very same day—writing a column.
Am I crazy? Perhaps? Should I just putter around the garden?
No Bleeping Way.
Yes, there’s stress, but we all have stress. You have it too. The absence of stress is death. And I’m not ready to sleep.
Not yet. Not yet.
I’m feeling butterflies in my stomach, like I did when I was a kid before a big game, mixed with great joy and excitement.
All of us face challenges. All of us take risks. You do it, too.
We don’t sit and whimper and curl up in the fetal position. We reach for our goals. We’re Americans.
And with your help, that’s just what I’m doing here at https://johnkassnews.com/
Tens of thousands of you have already signed up via email to join me in this great adventure we’re on, and every day there are more and more coming to the website.
Keep it up.
It’s been a crazy week, with all the emotional highs and lows you’d expect from leaving the paper, and dealing with my excellent lawyers and those great web designers at Yellow Box Agency
who put up this website johnkassnews.com in a matter of just a couple days.
They tell me that by the end of the week, or beginning next week at the latest, they’ll have tweaked the website so that those of you who’ve subscribed will be notified by email when new content is added here.
That means subscribers will be notified about new columns, interviews and commentary, perhaps guest columns from others, plus things I’ve found in the news that I think you might be interested in reading.
During the week from hell—when I said goodbye to the paper and started my own thing—my life was crazy indeed.
I was trying to write, but then there I was swamped with meeting after meeting while doing interviews about the move with friends who got the word out:
Dan Proft and Amy Jacobsen on Chicago’s Morning Answer, and on my own podcast, The Chicago Way podcast that I co-host with Jeff Carlin.
There was that time I saved Fran Spielman’s life (or so she says) at the City Hall press room when a man threatened to put two rounds into her head.
Fran is a great reporter, and a friend, and what she said at the end of the interview, about those former colleagues of mine who trashed and wrongly defamed me, well, I cherish what she said.
https://johnkassnews.com/fran-spielman-interviews-former-chicago-tribune-columnist-john-kass/
and my friends Thom Serafin and Lissa Druss on their podcast, The Crisis Cast,
https://johnkassnews.com/john-kass-the-view-from-the-back-pew/
They titled it, “The View from the Back Pew,” which is about my favorite story from the Bible, “The Pharisee and the Publican” that begins the period before Great Lent.
In their podcast, I think Thom and Lisa got to me in ways others haven’t gotten to me. They reached in, the way some of you readers have reached in, and took hold of my heart.
Then they got me talking about my father.
So yes, I became emotional. But it’s an emotional subject with me.
Betty and the boys listened to the Crisis Cast, and they loved it, and they asked me to write more about the story I told in that podcast. So, I will.
For am I not a river to my people?
And even with all this going on, (and I’m glad Betty makes sure I take my blood pressure medicine) I was still able to write two full columns for johnkassnews.com.
One for Father’s Day, with a photograph of the boys and me at the beach.
And another column on “The Unbearable Lightness of Lori Lightfoot”—about Mayor Lightfoot losing the city.
Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics linked to it on his national news site, blasting johnkassnews.com all over the country.
Thanks Tom!
What about this week?
Jeff Carlin and I just interviewed the smartest man I know for an upcoming episode of our podcast, The Chicago Way.
Who did we interview?
My brother Nick Kass, an international consultant who served the United States for 31 years, at the State Department, the White House and the Intelligence Community at senior levels, briefing presidents at home, and serving abroad.
He’s like my own Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s smarter brother, but a Mycroft who broke hanging beef ribs in the meat cooler of our family butcher shop, a southpaw who could hit like a real Rocky when he was a kid.
And he’s also the guy who knows the real story of the Chicken Kama Sutra I put on display in dad’s butcher shop—which earned me a hard, swift kick in the behind from my father.
One column I’m working on involves a terrible injustice visited upon an innocent victim by woke Cook County prosecutors and woke Cook County judges.
And another for the 4th of July on the catching of wild pigs.
It’s a theme I’ve touched on before, but seems especially appropriate, with Big Tech and Big Government on the same team now, stringing fences hoping to make ham out of all the wild pigs still left out there.
And those wild pigs who haven’t been trapped may have their spines removed, slowly and inexorably, by federal and state educrats, allowing psychological violence to be visited upon America’s children in those re-education camps we once called “public school.”
That powerful Crisis Cast podcast might make a column about what my father taught me about running a business in the milk cooler of our family store when I was 10 years old, more than 50 years ago.
And yet another, involving a golden hand, fingers spread, aimed at some idiot. We’re at the end of the month.
You know what time it is. Nominations for the Golden Moutza of June will soon be open on my Facebook pages. Remember to use the magic words, or it won’t count as a full nomination.
So, sign up my friends, subscribe to johnkassnews.com and join the great adventure so you don’t miss a thing.
When you read this, think of me brewing some coffee (Italian roast), and ready to light a fine maduro cigar. I’ve got to get to work.
Because when you’re your own boss, there’s always work to do.
Copyright 2021 John Kass