Today is the first day of the new financial year in Australia. But for me it’s a day of new beginnings in more ways than one.

Yesterday I did my final day of work as an employee. So today I am officially fully self-employed - finally (or self-insufficient as my friend Jodie describes it!).

I have to be honest that this is a daunting situation financially and I keep wondering if the time really is right to be making such a change.

However, I suspect there would never be a perfect time and it’s good for me to be taking the plunge into the deep end to see what happens.

And all up I am feeling pretty pleased about the change at least at this very early point - it’s been a happy day for me and I’m feeling enthusiastic about the future.

For now I’m going to spend a week or two getting myself a bit more organised, making some plans and smelling the roses. And then I will be getting stuck into some freelance projects and some shiny new handmade jewellery as well.

Another new beginning today is the life of my new MacBook Pro! In a nice piece of timing it arrived yesterday afternoon so I spent the evening after finishing work setting it up.

My old MacBook Pro is a few years old and given what I use it for and the demand I place on my computers it was time for it to be replaced. It was starting to limp along and have a few issues, including an overly-full hard drive. Plus there was a one off bonus for Australian small businesses investing in this sort of equipment and I decided I should take advantage of it.

And so far so good! It’s a beautiful piece of equipment, of course. Plus it has some design changes which seem to be a big improvement on my old machine. And it has a nice big and fast hard drive and a battery with an amazing life (it takes up to seven hours to run down!). It’s all good - so far at least!