Karachi United Football Club – Or why I work for myself
After four and a half long years of 18 hour days, 7 day weeks, I decided to take a break.
The last 12 months have been especially rough. We went through two due diligence trips; the toughest close I have ever had to make (still working on it); moved into our first, very own, all Alchemy campus; raised funding, declined funding, closed funding, spent funding (not necessarily in that order); and bet the farm on a new product launch that will go live in another 15 days at our first reference site. And if this wasn’t enough, we tripled our over head, hired another 10 converts to the cause and expanded our presence to Thailand and Dubai.
The difficult part was maintaining balance in my life while all of the above was happening. It didn’t happen (balance). Primary payees were time with the family and my health. I was out of my kids lives for most of last year. Fawzia and I work and ride to work together on most days, so at least we got some time (not enough) but the kids didn’t get any. On the personal health side, my early morning exercise routine went south while I ballooned past north of two hundred pounds in February. My New Year resolution was to not weigh myself at all.
So last week I quit working. Amin signed up with Karachi United Football club’s summer camp and on Tuesdays, Thursday and Sunday, I quit work at three, take Amin over to Rahat stadium, watch my little kiddo try to hit the ball for an hour and then have a nice walk in the summer heat for an hour or so. Rather than put my mp3 player on, I listen to the silence on Rahat and the background whups of 30 odd footballs being kicked around. Some of the little ones are quite good. A little less than 3 feet tall, they can already kick like Ronaldo.
We wrap it up with chicken nuggets and a shake at Sea view’s Golden Arches and then make a wild dash home in Karachi’s rush hour from Rahat Stadium to Gulshan.
I work for myself because every now and then I can make the choice of doing the right thing for my family. It is not as often as I would like it to be, but atleast I can.