Who am I again?

Tuesday, May 19, 2009 at 10:47 am (Hack for Hire)
Tags: , ,

For a long time, I’ve thought of my job as “just a job.” One that I’m oh-so-lucky to be able to do from home. Working at home for the last 10 years has certainly propagated that feeling — writing for a living is just what I do from my office (a spare bedroom) in between gardening, laundry, cleaning, cooking, grocery shopping, blogging (aka “real life”).

But as work has been painfully slow this year (in contrast to a very busy last year), I’m feeling a loss of identity in addition to a loss of income. Losing a job really does make you feel…marginalized? aimless?  — who am I if I don’t have a job?

I’m sure it’s the fact that I’m supposed to be working that makes the difference. If I didn’t have a job on purpose, that would be fine. I’d be happy (really happy) being a “housewife.”

But, now I’m just a loser non-breadwinner — a condition I can tolerate for a little while (there have been slow times before), but eventually I’m going to have to remedy. Never having worked retail or restaurant, I’m intimidated by that prospect, but it would be a good old-dog-new-tricks experience. (Maybe I’d be good at it, having had a lifetime of knowing what I don’t like from service providers. Or maybe I’d be fired because I’d be terrible at working with the public.)

Maybe it’ll be back to an office.

Ouch.

Really, don’t know if I could stomach that at this point — the meetings, the politics, the performance reviews, the having to sit there and look busy even when you’re not. I get sick just thinking about it.

Or maybe, as has always happened before, business will pick up and I’ll once again be successfully self-employed. That’s what I’m hoping for.

In the meantime, I’m secretly enjoying the downtime if not the empty wallet and dwindling savings. The sun does still shine, the flowers do still bloom, and the chores still need to be done, even when you’re under-employed. Time to get busy being useful at something.

Nobody can think straight who does not work.
Idleness warps the mind.
~ Henry Ford

6 Comments

They really do call it work for a reason

Sunday, March 1, 2009 at 10:53 pm (Hack for Hire)
Tags: , ,

I know I should be using my downtime at work more productively, so I set out to be productive. It took a while to whittle down my e-mail inbox and sent folders to under 400 each, but then…then it was time to do something real. But what?

Then I had a thought. With more than 15 years as a business marketing writer under my belt, I should have something to say about the topic that would be useful to people involved in marketing their business. I should have a few (in the lingo of my clients) “lessons learned” and “best practices” to offer. So, why not do what I do best — write — and share what I know about it in another blog, a professional one this time, attached to my professional Web site.

After some trial and error (and some help from Support), I managed to figure out the logistics of setting up another blog on WordPress and keeping my dual identities separate. But now…now it’s time to do that other part. The writing part.

I love writing this blog. It’s fun, it’s therapeutic, it’s something I look forward to. If I don’t have anything to write about, I can wait a few days. No pressure. If the writing’s not perfect or inspired or even grammatically correct, oh well — I’m writing for fun, not fame or fortune.

Writing a blog for work, however, is turning out to be just like work. I have to figure out exactly what lessons I’ve learned that might help someone else. I have to figure out how to relate those lessons in a way that’s concise and interesting, not judgmental or preachy or sarcastic. I have to write like I do for my clients — like a professional writer who gets paid to put fingers to keyboard and make something make sense.

So, with all that in my head, I’ve yet to finish my first post. I figure I better have a few posts done before quietly “launching” the blog with a link on my Web site. The same DIY Web site I scrabbled together several years ago in FrontPage that desperately needs updating — and I haven’t a clue how to do it.

Downtime suddenly feels more like overtime.

To think too long about doing a thing often becomes its undoing.
~ Eva Young

Leave a Comment

$3900 from my pocket to…whose?

Friday, February 20, 2009 at 2:01 pm (Hack for Hire, Writing by Ear)
Tags: , , ,

I was fearful of doing our taxes this year. I was fortunate enough to have a good year last year, largely due to one client. (The same client for which I am still working off part of that income and that now has a moratorium on hiring external writers and a 70-day payment policy on any work it does approve.)

I spent all day this past Sunday filling out the “tax organizer” our accountant uses to prepare our returns. Today, I got the word from him: We owe $3900. This on the same day I read this article in the WSJ and almost burst a brain vein.

So, you might say, Well, if you earned it, you have to pay on it.

It’s not like I haven’t been paying my taxes all year.

Every quarter, I sat at my desk, wrote the check, and sent the federal government an average of $1300, based on last year’s income, which is how you do it when you’re self-employed. I wrote two more checks to the state government and the local government. So, yes, I’ve already paid $5200 in federal taxes just for myself, not counting what Mike “contributed” through direct withholding on his paycheck.

I worked hard. I had my best year ever (after almost 10 years of self-employment). And now I get to pay for that success.

And you know, we didn’t squander the money. The vast majority of it went right to our ongoing house projects.

Yes, my fellow Americans, we are working hard to improve the modest, fixer-upper home we bought almost 4 years ago.

We didn’t buy a brand new $400,000 house we couldn’t afford. (We didn’t even buy a $175,000 house we couldn’t afford.)

We put about 6% of our income into our 401(k)/SEP-IRAs (and we all know how well that turned out).

I pay for my own health insurance. (Mike’s employer had been paying for his health insurance. But we just found out that his insurer is no longer offering small-group coverage. So now we have to find a new policy for him, and possibly pay more for that, too.)

We drive older cars so we don’t have car payments.

We pay off our credit cards every month.

We shop mostly at Wal-Mart, with an occasional foray to Sam’s Club.

We eat out more than we should, mostly at the bar down the street (it’s cheap, and it feels good to support a local business).

We use coupons a lot.

We gave a few hundred dollars to various charities, and donated items to Goodwill.

All in all, we are responsible citizens.

We seem to be in the minority.

I have one question:

Just which one of our bought-more-house-than-they-can-afford, not-working-and-on-welfare, decided-to-have-8-more-babies, lived-the-high-life-on-credit-cards-they-couldn’t-pay-off, “I-won’t-have-to-worry-about-putting-gas-in-my-car, I-won’t-have-to- worry-about-paying-my-mortgage” fellow citizens (or illegal aliens) should I make the check out to?

If, by the mere force of numbers, a majority should
deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right,
it might, in a moral point of view, justify revolution.
                                               ~ Abraham Lincoln

5 Comments

« Older entries Newer entries »