Self-Employment – Page 5

March 11, 2015March 11, 2015General Life Whatnot Self-Employment

I’m not miserable. I promise.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been getting an increasing number of the same type of comment/question, to the point that it’s now happening on a daily basis: “Are you absolutely miserable?”

“I bet you want that kid out of there!”

“Are you hanging in there?”

Guys. I’m fine. Yes, I’m 38 weeks pregnant. I’m carrying significant evidence of that fact around with me between my hips and my ribcage. But I don’t know how to credibly explain to anyone that other than the fact that cartwheels aren’t on my agenda, I feel remarkably normal.

February 5, 2015February 6, 2015Self-Employment Writing

Breaking Away from Ideal Worker Culture as a Freelancer

Brigid Schule’s book, Overwhelmed: Work, Love and Play When No One Has The Time just blew my effing mind. From the fact that constant stress and overwhelm causes our brains to physically shrink (something of which I am already in constant fear) to the revelation that women have been virtually conditioned away from leisure for all of human history, it’s overflowing with information that is both so personal and logical you feel like you’ve known it all along and so revolutionary you are apt to want to change everything about the way to do everything. It’s a good book. You should read it. It contains things important for every employee, employer, woman, spouse and parent should know to be better at being any of those things.

A major takeaway for me as a freelancer, however, was the concept of the ideal worker that permeates American work culture, and the startling realization that we freelancers, who have every reason to not ascribe to it, self-impose it all the same.

January 20, 2015January 20, 2015Self-Employment Writing

How to get to what’s next: Balancing ambition and comfort

I went to prenatal yoga at 11am yesterday. It was a Monday. Perhaps nothing has made me feel more at the top of the human food chain. Who does that? Who gets to change out of their pajamas at 10:30am, drive downtown on a Monday and spend 75 minutes doing yoga?

As it turns out, the answer really shouldn’t have been me. I only went because I can’t make my evening class this week, and at 31 weeks pregnant, I am fearful of what could happen to my poor body if I go a week without making sure it can still bend in half. But though I worked before and after the session, it screwed up my productivity of my entire day to the point that I just gave up around 7pm and decided to start again tomorrow.

But here’s the thing: That was just fine. I wasted a day of my regular productivity, and I was fine. I have a beautiful home, the mortgage for which I can afford, even with an occasional day off; I control my own schedule; I genuinely enjoy what I do, so if I spend 14 hours doing it tomorrow, that’s fine; I absolutely have 14 hours to dedicate to work each day; but I don’t have to. I stop when I want.

Who is this person? When, I began to wonder when assessing all of this, did I become a person surrounded by comfort? And exactly how is it going to destroy me?