Only The Curious

Okay, this is not the follow-up post to my previous post about entrepreneurship vs. the 9-to-5. Sorry. I know I promised it like, a week ago, to be written the next day. And yes, Aly, I know you’re dying for the next installment. Mom and Barbara have been haranguing (how is that even supposed to be spelled? I’m a former spelling-bee champ, but I have no idea. And it’s Friday afternoon, so, no, I’m not going to go get the dictionary to look that one up,) me about it too. Sorry ladies. And everyone else. I’ll write it early next week. Finger-crossie promises.

It’s my blog. I can write about what I want.

And what do I want to write about?

I don’t know. Stress, I guess. It’s been a terribly. stressful. week. Which I didn’t know that you could have when there are neither bosses nor deadlines present in your life, and your family isn’t nearby, and your life is primarily filled with beautiful weather, bicycling, and your sweetheart.

Actually, I think I’m stressed because of the lack of both. As referenced in my post about why I need a boss, I find one of the biggest challenges to trying to start my own business/freelancing is being my own task master. (Okay, so I guess I am going to write about entrepreneurship today. Who knew?) It’s really a struggle for me to get stuff done. Like write promised blog posts. Or do things I know I need to do for my business but OH MY GOD LOOK AT THE LAWN. IT NEEDS TO BE MOWED. NOW. See?

Barbara Winter talks about this in her workshops. It’s really easy when you’re working form home to feel productive because you cleaned the entire house, organized the last 10 years’ tax documents, or made your sweetheart a gourmet dinner and mowed his lawn. (Not a metaphor. And yes, I’m really excited that the freaking lawnmower is fixed. Apparently.) But the reality is, you’re not working. You might be being productive, but it’s still just productive procrastination.

And hence, an entire week has gone by without an article written or a blog posted. I did a couple of interviews. And, admittedly, I had to deal with things like a broken car and spider infestation (hence the stress. Like whoa. SPIDERS. EVERYWHERE. IN MY BEDROOM. NOT OKAY.) and these things take up time and energy. Oh, and money. That I don’t have. More stress. (Shout-out to Jon: thanks for the help on the car, bro!)

But I also know my lack of work-related productivity is primarily due to the fact that I haven’t given myself a schedule, or an editorial calendar, or even written down goals. So, starting Monday, I’m going to try doing some of those things. Why not this weekend? Well, as luck would have it, there’s a wedding. No, not my wedding. (Karl, deep breaths.) And the rehearsal dinner is at Karl’s folks’ place. And I am now apparently coordinating it. So, little busy. Lots of fun. Also the World Cup starts like, now, so productivity is at a standstill until that’s no longer a novelty.

If you have ways to schedule, keep yourself on task, etc. I would love to hear them. Help me out readers, PLEASE SHARE! What do you do to manage your time and productivity?

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To be self-employed or to be an employee, that is the question. It’s a subject that I wrestle with frequently, because I understand the pros and cons of each, and have been on both sides multiple times over the last 5 years. If you look at my resume, you’ll see that I usually have an office job from October through May, and then am freelancing, doing massage, or maybe working part-time in a gourmet kitchen store over the summer. It hasn’t been intentional; several of those lapses were due to layoffs. But it is interesting. The one year that I had a job during the month of May, it took me weeks to figure out why I was so antsy. Then I realized “oh, this is the time of year where I’m usually sitting by the lake with books like “Making a Living Without a Job””

To be honest, my heart lies in the self-employment camp. Unfortunately, my need to pay for things like my car and my health insurance (funny thing happens when you don’t regularly hold an office job: you don’t get benefits. More on that later…) frequently land me back in an office job.

I could write out a list of all the reasons I prefer self-employment, but Everett Bogue did a pretty darn good job of that earlier this week in his post: “27 Reasons You Should Never Have a Job.” I LOVED IT.

The only thing I would add is this: when I tell people I’m self-employed, they’ll often say “oh I could never do that. I need more security. Isn’t it scary not knowing how much you’re going to make every month?” Um, sometimes. Yeah, there are dry months. But you know what scares me more? Knowing I’m only going to make X amount every month. When you’re self-employed, there is endless potential for growth. I don’t have to wait for incremental raises; my salary could double (or more) in a year because one of my income streams takes off. If there’s a trip I really want to go on or something I really want to buy, I just push for a few more clients. Voila, extra money.

Yes, being self-employed is volatile. You need to save more for the down times and it’s important to have supportive friends, family, and/or significant others. But for me, ultimately, the freedom, flexibility, creativity, and potential are overwhelmingly worth it.

That is not to say, however, that I think everyone should be self-employed. It’s not for the risk-averse, or those who need stability. As Matt Cheuvront said today, Don’t Discount the Value of a 9-to-5.

I will admit that, being self-employed, I’ve spent months being broke while trying to build one income stream or another. It’s stressful. It can be lonely. The thing I miss most about having an office job is the social aspect – having co-workers to grab lunch or hit happy hour with. Not to mention brainstorming. And yeah, the stability is nice.

There are reasons for both ways of working. What I think is most important, though, is the mindset you take to your work. You can’t go into business for yourself thinking like an employee, and yet the most successful employees are the ones who go to work thinking like an entrepreneur. More on that tomorrow.

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I used to have anxiety attacks. All the time.

Walking to class, talking on the phone with my mother, sitting alone in my dorm room, I’d be thinking about my day, or my plans, or my life, and it would crash over me like a wave. My hands would sweat, my stomach would feel knotted, I’d get lightheaded.

There were lots of reasons for this anxiety. But I think it really came down to one thing: I wasn’t living my life the way I wanted it.

I wasn’t living my life the way I wanted it, because I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t know myself well. I had lived most of my life doing what other people had told me to, assuming the great mystery of why would reveal itself at some point.

For the first 23 years of my life I went to school, worked hard, got good grades. I was president of student councils, wrote for school papers, sang in choir and even tried a sport or two. I was working hard to do what everyone told me to.

But I had no idea why, or what I was trying to accomplish. Just this vague concept that if I worked hard and went to a good college and had a solid resume, things would fall into place. I figured that sometime during college I would find something I loved, and that would be my career, and I would be successful at it.

But the great epiphany never came. There was no life-changing professor to steer me in the right direction. There hadn’t even been an advisor with a decent recommendation on hand. People would ask what kind of work I was looking for, and I didn’t have a good answer. I didn’t have any answer.

All I knew was that, now that I had a degree, it was not acceptable to work as a barista indefinitely. And secretly, I also knew that I did not want a traditional office job; something I learned during a fabulous internship my freshman year – I knew that if I hated just interning at what should have been a fantastic place to work, there was no way I’d ever love any office job. But somehow, if I told people that I didn’t want a “real” job, it made overachiever, overambitious me into a slacker in their eyes.

So I job hopped, which I now like to think of as conducting field research into how I like to work. For the first time since I was able to respond to the question “what do you want to do with your life” with “be a ballerina-rockstar-astronaut-anthropologist-writer-butterfly” I have an answer.

It’s taken a lot of introspection. My meditation practice has helped with that immensely. So has doing a lot of reading and writing, attending workshops, and finding like-minded people who are doing what I want to do.

My answer is that I don’t want to do any one thing. I love variety. I like moving around. I like interacting with and helping people. I also like writing. I don’t like limitations. I don’t want to be limited to doing one thing, every day. I don’t want to be limited to staying in one place for 8 hours at a time. And I definitely don’t want to have the number of days I can travel decided for me.

So it has been amazing me to discover the likes of Chris Gillebeau, Lea Woodward, Barbara Winter, and many others who have made it okay to not want a traditional office job. I feel like I’ve “found my lost tribe” as my mother would put it  – people who are their own bosses, who are location independent, who realize that working and living your life shouldn’t be on opposite sides of the coin. People who make their money from lots of different sources, and who value experiences over objects. People who realize that true ambition is living life the way you really want to, rather than putting in your face time and calling it a day.

I look forward to sharing my experiences as I work to transition out of the traditional workforce and into a life of adventure and fulfillment.

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