Christa, Day 4: On Work and Working

Ah, work. My nemesis and my crutch. A necessary evil that is also the reason I have a book on Amazon published by a big league publisher. The thing that is currently keeping me from spending weekdays with my daughter. The thing that is allowing us to build up savings as opposed to burning through it like we were after I lost some of the choicest editing and writing work I've ever had. (Thanks, cyclical economy!)

Honestly, I like work and working. What I generally don't like is working outside of the house or working on a non-freelance basis or work that's fragmented, pointless, and entirely disorganized. Work I choose to do myself? Awesome. Work that I must do or face the prospect of losing my home or some other thing? Yuckers. But I guess that's what happens to some people when a hobby is also one's profession. Doing it on my terms is cool; doing it on someone else's terms? Not my cuppa.

Which brings me to today's Simple Living Manifesto item:

Simplify work tasks. Our work day is made up of an endless list of work tasks. If you simply try to knock off all the tasks on your to-do list, you’ll never get everything done, and worse yet, you’ll never get the important stuff done. Focus on the essential tasks and eliminate the rest.

For today's exercise, I'm going to focus on paid professional work - as opposed to things like my personal blog or projects that I sometimes undertake on a volunteer basis or any of my hobbies that are loosely tied to my career. Why? Because currently, my professional life is kind of up in the air. I am now working for part of each day in an office, but I also have great clients I work with outside of the office. Just not enough clients to get me back at home. Which is where I need to be to have another baby because that whole six weeks of maternity thing is just plain bunk.

Note: Apologies to anyone who reads my personal blog and has heard this all before! I am a serial complainer.

Once upon a time, plan was to have another baby, which is a plan than ended in some pretty serious weeks and months, and not at all pleasantly. And then when that didn't happen, we took a look at the bank statement and said "Craaaaaaap." So I did what I never, ever wanted to do, which was enrolled my daughter in daycare and went to work in an office. The best possible office, given my disinterest in utilizing the people skills I have and my inability to function as part of a team when I don't want to, since they don't seem to care about any of that. Which is part of why I am here right now, trying to balance everything I do and just barely hanging on. I guess professionally I need to prioritize... more? better?

And that's what today's item is about for me. Figuring out what I'm doing that contributes to my eventual goal of being back at home. So let's have a look at what is happening in my life, career-wise.

The In-Office Job: Cannot be cut right now. My hope is actually to eventually mold this job into something that is more in keeping with my work habit preferences and my larger life goals. De-prioritizing this would require that I be making quite a bit more freelance income, likely in conjunction with paying off certain debts.

The Big, Unpaid Project: If I want more freelance clients, I have to get the word out there that I'm available. Right now, I'm working on a website and the copy for said website, and when that's done, it will be branding time and networking time. Which will happen all in good time, but not until I get the copy written. So this needs to become a priority. I've been lazy about this; I need to just suck it up and have a couple of 4 a.m. starts to make it happen.

Freelance Work: I've had a few wacky clients in my day and while my client list currently is too abbreviated for my taste, the clients I do have are the best. I can't deny that I need more work - know anyone who needs a copy writer - if I'm going to get back to doing what I dig, but at the same time, I've been thinking about downsizing certain projects, too. I don't want to go into detail until I've actually made a decision about what direction to take, but upping my freelancing game may require chucking some other stuff.

Professionally, those are basically my commitments. I have some other items in the works, but they're in other people's hands now and won't necessarily be profitable so I can't count them in my list. Working for pay? As I said above, a necessary evil. Sure, I'd work if money wasn't an issue, but I might write one day and sew a dress that takes a week to complete before writing again or might take the summer off and just read and read and read. The editorial game is my avocation as well as my vocation - and to accomplish my goals (transitioning back to home, baby, financial security) I have to concentrate on the latter for now.

Just for fun, I'll distill this down even more into a totally prioritized but vague to-do list, and I'm challenging myself to accomplish these super focused goal-enhancing mini-goals by the end of the 72 Ideas in 72 Days Project:

• Finish my professional website and branding
• Decide how I want to structure my freelance commitments for autumn and beyond and commit
• Find at least one more freelance client

P.S. - Go have a look at Amy's Day 4 and the Attorney At Large's Day 4!