July is meant for celebrating your freelance freedom (LOLZ)
That moment when you realise the person that plans your destiny in January still doesn't understand the world could implode by July. And what to do about it.
Have you ever looked back on your early work as a freelancer and cringed?
Those wide-eyed moments on social media where you declared you’d never need a holiday ever again because you’d finally found your dream job. Or the early blog you wrote that is about as useful cat dressed in breeches is to riding a 7ft penny-farthing.
You can deny it all you like, but we all have them. Those moments where innocent us cut our freelance bangs and didn’t notice they were so wonky, it hurt.
Most of us had them with every single plan the December 2019 to January 2020 version of ourselves made.
Those wonderful aspirations about workshops with actual people in them? Gone
Those grand “reward your hard work and hustle” holiday travel plans? Gone.
Those clients who were carefree and trusting with their budgets? Gone
Here’s my “naw, look at you, you big marshmallow hearted, sincerely clueless kiddo” moment.
In late 2020, I produced a lovely planning booklet for my devoted Patreon Pinkies.
It included (among other things) tightly packing away lockdowns and those naughty little covid shaped disruptions. It was about smoothing down the skirts of a disrupted year past and putting on a new outfit together with a shiny new assemblage of knowledge and hard-fought grace.
All tied with a “thank goodness that’s over, am I right?” bobble-head doll.
Inside it, contained my proposed newsletter topics to inspire other freelancers.
Here’s the difference between rosy-cheeked end of 2020 Me and mid 2021 Me.
I checked my July newsletter topic suggestion (for myself and anyone around me) that suggested July was a month of “Celebrating your freelance freedom”.
<insert creeping smirk here>
Cracking that open in July was…different. Here in the Illawarra, during the middle of what is likely to be a three-month NSW lockdown, freedom is…well, buying bread while muffling thanks to the shop assistant.
This, just after watching my Dad die in some fairly stressful COVID-impacted circumstances that seriously did not go to plan.
It feels a bit like a DeLorean-sized dig.
Unsurprisingly, my newsletter is late because my inner hyena jumped up and made me roll maniacally on the floor for a few days at that sweet, almost Kawai-eyed optimism.
Yet, despite the giggle-encrusted “aw, shucks, you big hopeful goober and your freedom doe-eyedness” moment, I stepped back. Well, in truth, it’s not quite a step. Perhaps a well-placed rock from toe to heel. A little pulling back of shoulders from gut creased laughter to having shoulders perpendicular. It’s like pulling my mental Windsurfer sail upright to shake off the ocean water.
For what is freedom or a celebration without a little reflection on the negative?
In my mind’s eye, I see Hopeful Me dreaming of being on some stage I envisaged for 2021 talking about freelance freedom.
I don’t bring a heckler’s countenance. I bring this weird kind of “pain is the sand that makes the pearl” quote that often follows Janice Joplin around the music trivia books until it (eventually) finds its way back to Kahlil Gibran.
Hopeful Me is on stage, often armed with PowerPoint and some wonky idea that somehow, because I have an awful lot of sand in my eyes, mouth and undies, that a pearl may appear at some point.
What a nice idea.
And it is this that Audience Me understands. The Me of Now (population: lockdown) who is wiser in the seats appreciates the (naïve yet appealing) Hopeful Me of before.
There is still freedom in your circumstances exploding around you.
As a freelancer, even though I have artwork for 10 unlaunched courses and barely any real momentum to speak of, I have a modicum of freedom.
No-one is going to punish me harder than I punish myself for not completing something.
There is no boss to speak of. No permanent state of drudgery to contend with.
If I feel fractious and drawn, I can still find some tiny string within the work I weave to cling onto. And to pull myself closer to completing it.
And I can do it without someone yelling me for not doing something else first.
Even as I pancake in fear at nurses at the hospital who threatened to deny me access to my dying father. Even when there is (surprise, surprise) no paperwork or inter-agency agreement for compassionate grounds leading me to feel like a fugitive.
Even as systems fail me, freedom was still there.
Freedom is still present:
· Under the exclusion.
· Under the threats born of other people’s burn out.
· Beneath grey areas of governmental process no-one cared enough to clean up.
· In other people as they lash out.
Freedom exists because even when I am flattened to grief and non-existent policy to the rock of unfamiliar territory, I know what I know as freedom will one day come back. It will resume. For me, anyway. It most definitely is not the same for many others.
One day, there won’t be a crush of lockdowns or pressure. I will be able to revert back to the relative comfort of getting in my own way instead of it being someone or something else’s job. As hard as the feelings and sensations I encounter now with grief are, I can have faith they will one day recede.
And that, even when it feels like a long way off, is something, right?
It’s certainly a lot more than a lot of people without my privilege can say.
Spot-check: optimism
I spoke to the amazing Jessica Harkins from Six Onions recently about optimism and hope. We’ve decided it is a bit of glue for our ailing hearts- that and activism. More on that in September. But for now, let me breakdown the discussion as it applies to people, collaboration, clients and more:
The key to optimism might be a baseline belief in it. But it also requires three things to be activated:
1. The acknowledgement that a shitty moment or event doesn’t influence everything, it is not permanent and is most definitely not personal.
2. When people react in life, they are generally reacting to their own emotions and sensations. They simply use you as a prop on occasion. If you can spot the gap, you can avoid the unpleasantness. You can also stop being their puppet.
3. Optimism isn’t believing in happiness and positivity no matter what. It’s the act of feeling a range of emotions. And exercising that range of emotions in a healthy, satisfying and ultimately release-based way.
Check-in on your potential for optimism:
· What kinds of things do you say and repeat to yourself when it goes down the spout? What kinder, more compassionate and inspiring things can you say instead?
· When someone brings their emotional storms, are you putting on your raincoat or jumping right into it? When was the last time you chose not to get wet?
· Where is the middle ground? Are you over-investing in this? Are you divorcing yourself from emotions entirely? What does a mid-point look like instead?
Also- In the midst of the gurgling drain of July, someone kept asking me “why do we need therapy when the people who need it refuse to go?”
I struggled a bit with this question. It treats working on ourselves like some kind of quid pro quo with innate reward. As though hard work always means a pay-off, otherwise there is no point. This is not always the case.
To believe business, life or mental health is something to get whacked like some happiness piñata will only set us up for failure.
Instead, therapy (like any form of activity geared toward understanding and growth) has a much more self-contained, almost secret reward.
We do therapy so we can love ourselves in a way that others may not let us. And so that we can see the way they love is love, even though it might be damaged or under-repair.
If we work on ourselves as people, as business owners, creatives and idea makers, we create an endless reserve of love that helps oil the machines.
This is so important.
Especially when the machines are gummed up with self-doubt and imposter syndrome.
Or when contentment looks like some planet in a solar system far, far away.
Itty bitty bits of hope
Still feeling small and without power? Musician Jack River is digging into Australian media and businesses to get them to play more Aussie music and support this decimated industry – and it’s working. I am rediscovering the wonderful Treme TV series (set in post-Katrina New Orleans) and Treme soundtrack to remind me that creativity can be an action of protest while also a source of community and comfort in uncertain times. Every night, I light a candle for my Dad so that he can map the stars between his daughters and know where we are. I even took it to the beach so he could find the ocean he used to surf as a kid. Watch this incredibly Australian film clip and hear the song that captures the struggle of motherhood so beautifully (and support the New Graces if you have money to spare to help feed the kids, too!). And it’s time to break up with apology so you can become empowered.
Freelancing with a spoon
Can you imagine what flavour your freelance career might be? Mine is often a warhead lolly of grape and chilli. Or something with dog hair that isn’t that unpleasant once remedied because at least I got to pat the dog.
Let’s see what else we can uncover on the spoon.
Need financial support due to COVID impacts? Here’s an article that outlines what’s available. Want inspo? Uncover your creative personality and lean in on it. How the pandemic showed us that the office and middle management were so passe. Specialising may not make you the superhero you think you are (vive la generalist, I say!). Here’s how to deal with freelance procrastination.
And so much showcased inspiration in how we stretch as freelancers, create community-based projects, what we freelancers write, or make things to delight.
Get eventful (live and action replay)
Try the antidote of self-compassion to shake off COVID funk (free replay). Come along to class and learn what to do with myself and Hayley Rollason-Jones when plans go boom (Patreon – replay). If you plan for your business, why not for major impacts? We’re celebrating end-of-life awareness in August in Australia with this special freelancer-based Dying to Know Day presentation on reducing family trauma through better planning (free, August 13th). Lynne Testoni is going to help you with that digital presentation problem (Patreon – august 19th).
Finally, put on the small spangles I say.
Every day you celebrate something, even if it is completely absurd, you’re reminding yourself that you did something close to a win. And those wins add up, my friend. They sincerely and utterly do.
With love,
Rebekah
Thank you. I’m so sorry for your loss and what you have endured in farewelling your Dad.
So grateful for you sharing this, it was a beautiful and encouraging read, just what I needed.