My "Work"

Today I'm gearing up to do some "work." I use quotation marks because, as a Midwestern girl, it's not work in the way I was raised to believe work is. Work was sitting in a cubicle, or an office, and doing something mundane and meaningless to you. In fact, if this was the kind of work you ended up doing, then you were doing all right for yourself. You were better than the people who had to work in food service or the people who had to work outside or on a car lot. You were classier, you had a college degree. You had bought yourself a lifetime of relative solitude, a desk and a chair, access to a printer, a desktop computer, and four partial walls made of God knows what covered in gray speckled fabric. 

I'm far from the first person to bemoan and belabor the point that work in most offices is hardly satisfying. And the meager pay as a cog in some company's wheel really isn't worth the real cost of wasting years of your life gossiping at the water cooler, drinking decent coffee you pay for or office coffee that sucks. In fact, office work you don't like or aren't in charge of is not any better than working on a car lot or in a restaurant or anywhere else.  You're still just someone else's bitch.


So, after a decade of office experience, I quit to "work" as a writer. And I've had my ups and downs in the last six months with it. Trying to find a balance between consistently working and total burn out. Trying to find some sanity in a job that I don't speak to anyone all day long in, but via email and if I'm lucky gchat. And trying to be honest with myself if this is really the right gig for me. 


Because, let's face it, just because you're good at something doesn't mean you should do it. And you may have a passion for something in general, but that doesn't mean you've always chosen the right version. You may be in the second or third iteration before you find the most satisfying way to express it. 


This current version I've thrown myself into is fashion and beauty writing. Freelance style. And so far today I have to write an introduction for a woman I'm helping write an eBook for. I'm in negotiations with an old work friend from New York who wants me to become partner and manage his fashion site. And I'm in the beginning stages of launching my own lifestyle site with two girlfriends. And then there's the easy, quasi reliable work that I've been doing for years. Short, instructional, articles for Tyra Banks website on everything from how to dress to how to wash your face. Some days I love it and I'm on fire and sharing the info I know is always fun. But, as a full time job, I couldn't/can't do it. Not indefinitely. Not for someone else. I'd go crazy with the same format all the time. 


Not to mention, I feel as though I've built up an online portfolio quite enough. I'm ready to go print. All I have to do is learn how to pitch to print magazines. But, learning and applying to new gigs, changing that iteration takes time. And when I'm writing my "pay-the-bills" stuff all day long, where is the time to do what I need to move forward? It's not there.


So, on Tuesday, I have an unofficial meeting with the manager at a restaurant downtown. A swanky wine bar/restaurant. I was looking for bartending work because I thought it'd be fun and have the added bonus of meeting people, except I have no experience bartending. So, this fine young man is going to put me on table service to start (if he likes me) and then I could potentially move into tending bar. And I'm doing it for two reasons: something to do that helps me to be around people rather than myself all day long and a way to make an income and buy myself time to change up the iteration into something I find more sustainable. That is managing my own site(s) and writing for myself, instead of everyone else. 


The funny thing is I always thought that the "creative" person's lifestyle of bartending or waiting tables was kind of sad, kind of lame. Unstable. How ironic that after working in an office for 10 years at the age of 28, I decided that I was done forever sitting in a gray cubicle. I realized that a mid-life crisis is probably more about going insane from the monotony of an office job, with no forseeable way out, than it is about trying to recapture lost youth or getting bored with your wife and kids.


So, it's Saturday, and I'm going to go and try to do some "work" right now. Wish me luck. The grind can be tough.