After much soul searching I've decided it's time to shut down the business and start earning money in a much more regular and sustainable manner. to that end I've taken on a job working for a local developer as a Site Manager. Steady (and rather decent) money, weekends and evenings blissfully free, a company car and all that stuff - I'd be mad not to (or so I keep telling myself)!
Suffice it say that there will be some bits and pieces and machines coming up for sale from me in the marketplace. I'll be keeping the bench and the hand tools though. Maybe now it's time to perfect my hand cut Dovetails and finally use that Stanley shooting plane that's been languishing under the bench.
I can appreciate where you're at. I had my own business in the USA up until 2003, at which point I was offered a full-time teaching job at a furniture college in the UK, which gave me chance to move back here - I suspect I was at about the same age when that happened as you are now. Admittedly business had been challenging anyway, and income was erratic, so the chance to earn steady money was very appealing. It meant selling all my heavy machinery and just hanging on to my hand and power tools. I do wish now that it hadn't been a necessity to get rid of all the big kit, but stuff made to work in the USA isn't readily adapted to working in the UK, and then there's the cost of shipping! As someone else mentioned, I think it would be a good idea to hang on to your big stuff, if you can, because I find I'm hampered somewhat for working wood at home now without such equipment.
Still, the teaching job led to more responsibility and opportunities to grow in other ways, and I have been able to continue working on a part-time self-employed basis on and off since I moved back to the UK. Anyway, because of changes since 2003, more complicated than I really want to go into here, I now find myself in a situation where I've developed or acquired a few reasonable income streams from different sources, and I no longer teach full-time. So, nowadays, I'm part-time self-employed as a roving maker (of furniture, joinery, etc), although most of that work fell off a cliff at the end of March this year, but I have picked up small bits of consultancy, and published writing earns a crust, plus other bits of money coming in, what with me being, er, well ... sixty plus. And from time to time, like now for instance, I pick up some part-time teaching of woodworking of various sorts working on a PAYE basis.
What I hope I'm getting across is that this job you've taken may provide you with an opportunity and the time to explore other ways of earning a living through developing what's often called a 'diversified portfolio', something you can gradually work your way into over the next few years in readiness for when the Site Manager type gig needs, in your mind, to come to an end, or a perhaps unwanted or unexpected end is forced upon you. Slainte.
