Tag Archives: paying the bills

The wisdom of the Dalai Lama

Posted on by
2

This morning I woke up early to take a crack at the book. It was somewhere around 5 AM, and after I wrote down what had come to me, I hit up Twitter to see who else was up and posting. The Dalai Lama (@DalaiLama) had this to say:

(For those who don’t do graphical interfaces, he tweeted “You need self-confidence and determination: feeling depressed and losing hope will never really help to correct any situation.”)

This guy is like a Tibetan fortune cookie, slapping me upside the head. I don’t regularly see his tweets in my Twitter stream, perhaps due to time zone differences, but this one was a perfect shakabuku. Lately, I’ve been swamped with “real” work (i.e. the stuff that pays my bills), which has been causing Naked Montréal to fall by the wayside. It’s been getting me down, and I started to feel depressed about it, like I would never get around to finishing this book. But it’s true: feeling depressed and losing hope don’t help. You’ve just got to get up early in the morning, give your cat some quick snuggles, and then get to work.

So here I am, working on my novel. And you know what? 5 AM never felt so good.

(Cross-posted from NakedMontreal.net)

When freelancing sucks

Posted on by
4

“I hate my job, and I don’t think I’m gonna go anymore.“
“Are you going to quit?“
“Nah, I’m just not gonna go anymore“
—Office Space

I don’t know what to write anymore. For the most part, I’m frustrated with my current employers, who either give me terrible assignments, pay me less than I’m worth, or just straight up don’t respect the work that I do for them. (Except you, Quill & Quire; you are the only employer I actually like. Wanna go steady?)

On the one hand, I feel like I shouldn’t complain, because being freelance means that even when my assignments suck and I make shit money, at least I’m my own boss and get to set my own rules about when and where—and what—I will write. I like that part of my job a whole lot, and I’m not sure I could ever deal with doing a “real” job again.

But on the other hand, yes, goddamn it, I am dissatisfied! I hate making shit money, I hate getting all the worst assignments, and I hate feeling like I am just wasting my time doing busy work rather than making some kind of difference in the world. I like to learn new things, to talk to interesting people, to write things that matter—even if those things ultimately only matter to me. Currently, most of my employers don’t do diddly-squat in the way of helping me to learn or to grow as a person. They certainly don’t care about nurturing my soul, and they aren’t doing nearly enough in terms of nurturing my physical self, with respect to fair wages that pay my (very freakin’ minimal) bills.

So I’m fed up, and I’m not sure what to say about it, because I feel like freelancers aren’t supposed to bite the hands that feed them, no matter how many times those hands also slap them in the face. I keep writing and erasing notes to my bosses–the ones that keep on asking for more and more, while giving me less and less. I keep wanting to call bullshit, to stand up for myself. Because, honestly, who else will? And yet every time I tell my husband when I’m doing, he tells me not to burn my bridges.

But I ask you: If I’m on a bridge to nowhere, what does it matter?