June 2008

Aside from the fact that he seems content in flashing his cute little rump to anyone within eye-shot, how many of you don’t feel like this kid some days? Short limbs, teeny tiny hose, big-ass garden to tend to: metaphor for your life too, or is it just working for me?

I received a lovely pamphlet from the village yesterday containing a report of all the fun chemicals in our town water supply, in addition to a complicated spreadsheet of who is allowed to water their lawns on which days, between which times, and with what types of hoses. (I’d love to be kidding.) All I can say is the village should take this moment to thank a variety of gods that I don’t own property, a lawn, or a sprinkling system of any type. Because rules? I’m all for breaking them. In fact, if I had a hose I’d probably be walking up and down my street right now looking for some water sources to tap into in pure defiance. (Specifically, because the cost of these fancy-ass pamphlets could have been put toward — oh, I don’t know — saving a really big rain forest somewhere.)

The absolute BEST part of the pamphlet was the part where they went on-and-on-and-on about the conservation of natural resources. Included were tips on how to brush one’s teeth without running water, as well as how to do laundry in a bucket. I’m seriously considering writing to the folks in charge and asking them to have their heads examined. Last I checked, we were spending tens of thousands of dollars to build (plastic) playgrounds in the (rich) part of town so the (spoiled) kids (who spend all day playing video games) would have some place to play (even though now that the parks have been built no one plays there). Fast-forward two months, and we are apparently very earth-conscious and so poor we can’t afford water. (Yet a lovely field nearby is being plowed over down the street where a new subdivision is being erected.)

But I digress.

The whole thing got me thinking about gardens — and how I’ve always sort of wished I had a garden. Except for that whole part about how I can’t grow plants because I kill them, and I like weeds too much to pull them up, I think I’d be really cool with a garden. I could sit in one, maybe have a little pond of fishes, and watch the butterflies. And my bunnies could eat some cabbage — assuming I could grow cabbage, which I cannot. Folks over the years have told me I could learn to garden if I practiced. I’m pretty sure that’s a huge lie, but I don’t have the patience to find out.

My father used to say the secret to keeping plants alive is not to over-water. I am starting to wonder if his theories about gardening also might apply to the whole freelance life.

A little water goes a long way.

I tend to be OCD. I over-think everything, obsess over stupid shit, make my clients think I’m the most indispensable person on the planet, and workworkwork myself into a state of burnout I have trouble bringing myself back from. Big fire. Little hose.

My new plan: learn to tend the freelance garden with less water. Clients don’t need me to respond to their emails at 3am (even if they think I do). Blogs don’t require five new posts per day, and comments don’t need to be immediately responded to (even if the Blog Gods might disagree with me). Not every new job lead has to be followed up on, especially when I don’t need any new work at the moment. Must conserve resources. Must learn to let the plants live.

You’ve met these schnickelfritzes, haven’t you? The crazy multi-tasking corporate dudes on the train who are working on their laptops, talking on their cell phones, reading the Wall Street Journal, drinking a grande Starbucks and chasing it with a Red Bull, all while their Blackberries are buzzing in their pockets and the nannies are beeping in on the call waiting to remind these guys what their kids’ voices sound like?

I sat by one of these men on the train the other day. He was visibly shaking — possibly from over-caffeination, or perhaps from the stress of trying to balance all these technological devices on his lap while not spilling his coffee. He sneezed at one point, and when I said bless you he looked at me like how dare you disturb me with your platitude? Don’t you know how important I am?

I laughed. Not because it was funny — because I actually felt a little sorry for the guy — but because that’s totally the path I was headed for. Somehow, I detoured and derailed myself from that existence. For that, I’m grateful. Sitting next to Mr. Schnickelfritz was a happy reminder that sometimes I don’t realize how lucky I am to have freed myself from Corporate Hell.

Don’t get me wrong; I have my own workaholism as a freelancer, which is totally sick and twisted in its own way. I’m addicted to my iphone. I spend way too much time online. I care about my clients more than I should. But I can also kick back with some tunes and a book for a thirty minute train ride and not worry that the world I’ve built for myself is going to come crashing down around me. However, I would never have gotten to that point had it not been for spending several years observing oh-too-many folks like this, all of whom inspired me not to want to be like them.

So thank you, Mr. Schnickelfritz, for the lesson.

I often get into heated debates with my friend Robert who writes fiction. He thinks I’m too corporate. I think he’s too (to borrow a word from the James Chartrand dictionary) arTEEST. Last night Robert and I chatted for the 407th time about writing through writer’s block.

After all, if one wants to be a REAL writer, one should write every day. Right? And surely this writing even when one would rather drive pencils through his eyes will never ever lead to burnout. Right? (insert my dramatic eye rolling here)

As things between Robert and me often go, we parted on our favorite shared cliche – agreeing to disagree. Yet we both left the table feeling inspired, wondering why we don’t get together to debate (and have flirt fights with baristas) more often.

Robert writes every single day, whether he wants to or not. He’s never felt burnt out, nor has he ever experienced what he’d call a real case of writer’s block. His fiction in its final form is brilliant, but most of what he writes is garbage. It takes him a hundred hours to get to ten good hours worth of publishable content. (He says so. I’m not being a jerk.)

I, on the other hand, save my writing for the times when inspiration strikes. When I’m inspired to write, what I crank out is pretty good. On the rare occasion I try to bust out my muse when she would rather be hibernating, my writing sucks major ass. I could easily spend a hundred hours writing one sentence in those times, and that sentence would still bite — hence my not bothering. I would prefer to spend those hundred hours doing something that won’t make me want to put my fist through my face. Yet when I’m inspired, I burn the candle at both ends. I’m willing to sacrifice sleep and food to crank out the good goods, knowing full well I’ll feel burnt out when it’s over. And I know trying to write my way out of burnout is very akin to lighting my hair on fire then wondering why my head hurts.

So who is right? Maybe we both are. Maybe neither of us is. Maybe we all have to do what’s right for us and stop listening to the folks who tell us how we have to be or what we have to do to be a real writer, a good writer, the best writer.

But I’m curious. Does writing through writer’s block work for you? Have you ever successfully written your way out of burnout?

“Ruby or Glass?” the salesman in my head asked like I was at the market facing a toss-up between paper or plastic. “Do you want to be the sad tired girl who gets the good looking guy in the end, or do you want to be the rugged chick who makes it through the storm knowing there’s no place like home?” Well, I’m a lesbian. So you know how I chose.

But really… That whole fairy tale freelance lifestyle bit? I’ve always seen it as a huge ploy. Kinda like the shoe sale where they say Buy One Pair, Get Another Pair Half-Off. No one NEEDS two pairs of new shoes on the same day. But it’s temptation – the kind that feels like fate. You read the ad, and already you know you’re going down.

We enter Corporate Burnout Land (or Mommy World, for some of you), and suddenly we get There’s No Place Like Home Syndrome pumped through our veins like crack. Like morons, we buy it. We enter Freelanceville knowing there’s no way we could ever go back or give up what we have, all because we love being able to say….. (drum roll please)…… WE WORK FROM HOME.

We work from home. What does this REALLY mean? We sit around watching television all day while pleasantly chatting on the phone with old friends, tending to the neighbors’ kids, hosting sex toy parties and baking snickerdoodles? That’s what several of my relatives think I do all day… but no. We work. From home. (Get it?)

We work from home. We get talked about like we’re huge slackers who can’t seem to land a real job. We pay out the ass for health insurance, if we aren’t lucky enough to live in Canada or to have opposite-sex spouses whose employers pick up our tabs. We hire people to do our taxes, because our brains hurt too much to learn to decode the IRS manual on the 1040. If we’re lucky we work long hours, sacrificing the time we’d once intended to spend with our loved ones, doing the thing we love because we’ve gotta do it longer and harder now than we ever did when we worked for someone else. We work for ourselves. This is our life.

But does it have to be this way? I thought up this shoe analogy on three hours of sleep in as many days, in between coming home from the airport from a funeral and being put on hold for the third time by a forth dentist office because my guy abruptly retired and I have a cavity (and no, I can’t wait until August, because my friggen tooth hurts, which was the entire point of my trying to make this appointment, thankyouverymuch). I thought up this shoe analogy, and I thought, “Shoes suck. I want a do-over. I choose barefoot.”

If you come around this blog, like ever, you’ve noticed I haven’t been around much. And when I am around, I’m writing posts like this. (I’d apologize, but I’m not wholeheartedly sorry, and half-assed apologies really aren’t my thing.) There is a reason for my absence. It’s called putting all the shoes up for adoption at the local women’s shelter and saying to those who stare at my long awkward toes as they melt into the blacktop, “Yes, I know my shoelessness will hurt like hell when the storm comes, and maybe I’m missing out on my prince. But I’m tired of dreaming other people’s big dreams, and I’m tired of being so friggen prepared. I prefer to live.”

Freelance. It looks free. Why isn’t it?

Maybe we set ourselves up for failure the moment we read the ad. In freelanceville, Buy One Get One Half Off only applies to moronic clients who can’t seem to understand the concept of paying an invoice on time.

At first glance – and maybe second and third — there is nothing free here. No bonus. No pat on the back. No get out of jail free card. But if we look again, maybe that isn’t true. Maybe part of being our own bosses is supposed to be giving ourselves those bonuses, those pats on the back. Maybe it’s our job now to get ourselves out of jail, whatever the price.

Looking at it that way these past few months has helped me. I don’t have to be the gal who Disney would swoop down from heaven to star as Blogger Princess. I don’t have to be loved, or even liked, except by the clients I choose to grant that privilege to. Yes, folks – I’ve learned a valuable lesson: I’m really in control here. It’s not just a sales pitch. I’m really my own boss. I really am in control of choosing my own clients. I don’t have to take on work I hate or work for people who can’t pay an invoice on time. Granted, I’ve been doing this long enough that I’ve built up enough of a reserve where I can be so choosy; I no longer live paycheck to paycheck, as I did when I first started freelancing. I have earned the right to give up and throw it all away if I want to. After all, it’s my life. If I want to walk around in flip-flops come December, the only one who will suffer is me.

Like Dorothy, everything I’ve ever needed has been inside me the whole time. That’s the epiphany. The house can come crashing down and witches can taunt me. I don’t need a wizard. And really, I think the best way for me to survive – as a workaholic – is to ignore whatever might be behind that curtain. Kind of like window shopping – it’s evil. Those shiny ruby shoes are nothing but trouble.

But glass? What could be more uncomfortable than ruby but glass? I have to wonder about Cinderella, and whether that prince of hers wasn’t symbolic for the big career she’d one day marry. Maybe she was a workaholic. Maybe in the first draft she simply lost the damn shoe because her feet were so numb from walking around in her Corporate Function Drag that she didn’t notice she was stumbling home in one high heel, structurally imbalanced. Probably not… But ya never know…

So my question to you all, dear bloggy friends, is what are your slippers made of?