Thanks for positive comments gents, much appreciated, I'm now 9 months in and still no regrets or 2nd thoughts.
Someone the other day asked me what its like working for myself and the best way I could describe it was...
You are sat in the permanent employee mini-bus which is driving along a freeway, some people are busy working away, some are just gazing out the window and some are asleep in the back. In a moment of madness I kicked the back door open jumped out so I'm all alone and now have to run as fast as I can so I don't fall flat on my face while trying to keep up alongside
I also think I'm working harder than I have ever done as it's my name above my companies name which is a reflection of me rather than me being just another face in a crowd working for a company
I'm used to working at a relentless pace, it's what I enjoy and gets me out of bed in the morning, race dates don't move so you find ways of getting the work done in time. My working week is still very long but I still want to go to work every morning so count myself lucky.
However the last few weeks have been mentally quite tiring. Instead of finishing one project and then moving over to the next my working week and sometimes days are split 50:50 between design work on a race car project and a high performance road car project using 2 different CAD software packages one of which I last used 8 years ago
Never had a problem saying 'whoa slow down there tiger I'm not keeping up with everything' when I think I'm pushing beyond my limit. Yesterday I had to say something as on my way home the night before I couldn't phone home as I'd run out of RAM and couldn't remember my home tel. no.
I'm under no great stress just thought I was close to my limit of being empty in the brain department which will for sure compromise the quality of my work. Juggling two highest priorities set by two different people never works well for long.
Still not done any networking/advertising yet, only bought a cell phone a few weeks ago (lived without one for the last year which is very liberating) and only just created a company email account today but it hasn't stopped potential work offers.
I've been quite humbled by the type of companies asking if I'm interested in working for them, I've had approaches from an F1 engine manufacturer, an F1 team setting up a technology offshoot company to build a hyper-car, a very cool road car engine project and a company making modern retrofit products for the classic car market.
I'm happy where I am and have too much work to think about moving or taking on more work so I accepted a 6 month contract extension which will take me up to the end of Dec. After that I have no idea what I'll be doing which I find both exciting and scary in equal measure.