Something significant has happened.

Well, shit. This wasn't part of the plan.

Honestly speaking, I don't think I ever had a plan in the first place. Just a really really vague idea of how I want my life to be in the indeterminate future. I don't have a 5-, 10-year plan or whatever it is that other more ambitious/confident people have. All I had was a vague idea where I lived a pretty comfortable and decent life, all my needs fulfilled and some luxuries thrown in for good measure. Maybe a small family. Nothing fancy. No expensive cars, no multiple properties. Working 5 days a week, maybe a weekend once a month, nothing too strenuous. My nights would be untouched. I would be free.

Things have taken a VERY sudden turn now though. It all started when I decided to pick up a freelance project from my boss. I would basically do it out of office hours. After studying the project, I knew I was way in over my head if I were to do it alone. So I decided to recruit my colleague to work on the project with me. We would split the payout and workload equally.

Near the end of the project, we started thinking about how we would want to be paid. After some thinking, we decided that we did not want to be paid a lump sum for our efforts. We weren't willing to just let go of something that took so much of our time and energy for a simple sum of money, no matter how large. In the end, we decided to work out an arrangement with our employer, where we would take a smaller initial payout in return for monthly royalties, based on how how many customers used this little software.

After some initial wrangling, we came out of the discussion mostly intact. But something had changed. We initially wanted chump change every month for as little responsibility as possible. But after negotiations with our employer(curse you Vincent and your rationalisations!), it looks like a very real possibility that I and my partner are on our way to owning our very first commercially-viable intellectual property. We would license the software out to our employer, who would pay us royalties periodically, based on how many of his customers used it. We would be responsible for maintaining and updating the software as and when required. Our employer would be mostly concerned with selling it.
This has essentially turned into a formal business arrangement, with negotiations, and contracts, products, services and goodness knows what else.

I am now effectively a businessman. Oh, the horror.

Nowhere in my shitty little plan for the future did it say that I would actually be involved in business. I'm not a visionary. I don't come up with sweeping business strategies. I'm not driven to succeed. I don't want to work so hard in order to make oodles of money. I am shell-shocked, overwhelmed and more than a little terrified of what this all means, and will entail. I don't know what kind of price I'll be paying in order to run a freaking business of my own. I am not prepared. I don't have the right mentality. I'm just a simple, lazy guy trying to make a little more money, that's all. I am afraid that this is going to be well over my head, and it will all come crashing down like a skyscraper being demolished. Neat, controlled, utterly devastating and somewhat spectacular(fuck the house of cards simile. This will hurt.).

I can't think about it. I'm afraid to think about it. Something has changed, and I am fearful of it, and yet, I am curious to see how it will all pan out. The cat has yet to figure out that his curiosity will kill him.

I think I had better buckle up. Life is about to get somewhat interesting, I think.