this woman’s work

Yesterday we homeschoolers headed out to a Wexner Center school program for the Frog Bride. Afterwards the performers had a Q&A session and the kids asked lots of great questions (Noah wondered why there was only one actor in the show). Me, I wanted to know how in the hell those guys make a living and if it’s a real living or one where they still need to borrow money from their parents.

When I did that talk at the GCAC, I told the artists that they need to become their own patrons. The way I see it, people who get to live purely creative lives are few and far between and PARENTS (particularly mothers) who get to live them are even fewer. But many of us can live partially creative lives if we play our cards right. I mean, I’d rather sit around all day and think deep thoughts and write those deep thoughts down then stare at my page and sigh and go daydream for awhile and then come back and edit before I go back to staring into the middle distance. Unfortunately I have to make a living and I also have to wipe tushies, buy groceries, yell at people who leave their soccer shoes in the middle of the kitchen floor, discuss the merits of High School Musical II vs. High School Musical I and otherwise live my life outside of my head most of the time.

I have been itching lately to write but life has conspired against me. Having lots of work is a blessing even if it’s a creative curse and in this economy I’m grateful for my over-scheduled calendar even if it means I’m feeling a little run ragged. So it goes.

I’ll admit that I was feeling jealous of that guy hopping around the stage like a Frog Bride and jealous of the musicians accompanying him but I was also feeling inspired.

What I told the GCAC crowd is that creatives are good at finding creative solutions, right? We can find inspiration in odd places (like catalog copy or writing up a brochure) and we can also build skills when we stretch our corporate muscles. Plus we’re driven enough that we manage to squeeze the good stuff in around the mundane details of actual in real life living.

At least that’s what I tell myself when I’m cursing my calendar but blessing my billing. There’s time for everything if I’m willing to work in fits and starts. (And neglect the children some — they don’t mind. It means more television for them!)

But this freelancing I’ve been doing, I’ve learned a lot that’s benefitted my creative career not the least is to find opportunity and (important part) be willing to reach out and grab it. I’ve also learned a lot about marketing, a lot about networking and reminded myself of how much I enjoy public speaking and direct service with clients. To grow myself professionally I’ve had to stretch myself personally and since a creative career is a career (meaning I’ve never wanted to be Emily Dickinson) what I’m getting out of this less creative one has so far served me well in other ways.

Anyway. This is a buck myself up post because I’m itching to write this one essay and just haven’t had the time AT ALL and am looking at more work coming down the pike.

And no one died, burst into tears (ok Madison did once but it’s because she saw a spider) or fell down the stairs. Yes, we survived the day without Brett. It wasn’t easy — I had to make my own coffee and the children had to suffer through my Mac & Cheese, which isn’t as good as Daddy’s — but we did it.

The kids and I cleaned 3/4 of the basement, which made a pretty big difference. I also moved the bright light downstairs, leaving the living room in near darkness. But it’s worth it to know my children aren’t squinting at their toys.

Madison is a lousy cleaner having no attention span and being easily distracted by every toy we unearthed. Noah spoiled me with his focused, attentive cleaning by age four, I guess. I finally quit nagging her and just set her up out of our way since she kept tipping over piles of stuff we’d just sorted. Now she’s very happily playing with, I think, her duplos. (”No,” she says. “PLAYMOBIL!” Sorry. Missed that.)

I’m grouching about a couple of late checks — both large-ish, one spectacularly late and one the same late it is every month. I dearly wish every client would pay in a timely manner instead of making me send repeated reminders. It’s part of freelancing that I really, really don’t like but there it is. I don’t know a freelancer in the world who doesn’t contend with it.

I wanted to use the new/old header graphic. And I wanted to play with wordpress themes. That’s the real reason we started Open Book Strategies — so I could play with wordpress themes! Speaking of which, I need to get to work!

This may mean no Red, White & Boom festivities at the Clippers game tonight. It may mean no Clippers game. I’m not all that heart-broken about it but Madison is. She says, “I’ve never did Red, White & Boom before!” I’ve never did either but you don’t see me complaining. Of course I’m old and grouchy and on my way to crotchety so not having to sit in bleachers eating stale peanuts and slapping mosquitoes while I wait for fireworks is ok by me. Don’t worry — I’m playing sympathetic while hiding my glee. I just hope Kristin’s shindig doesn’t get rained out because really, it’s the pinnacle of our social life.

Brett and I spent the morning brainstorming new names for our non-existant company. It was fun because he’s funny. It was also annoying because he doesn’t really understand brainstorming, which is just shouting out ideas and not shooting ‘em down as they come up. Brett is used to self-censorship and being overly self-critical. He needs some loosening up in the brainstorming department but eventually he got the hang of it and we ended up with a short list of names that neither of us hate. I sent ‘em off to a couple of smart, branding-savvy friends and now we’re waiting to see if any of them are worth keeping.

I’m at a place where I need to stop and reorient myself and figure out what the heck I’m doing and it’s not been easy. I met with someone today and started out thinking I was going to have to resign myself to a certain situation but she asked enough pointed questions that I ended up all trembling and tearful confessing that I don’t know what in the heck to do next but that the way I’m doing things now isn’t really working the way I want it to. So she gave me a sound (but loving) talking to and reminded me of what I really wanted out of this great freelancing gig I’ve been working on. She shook her finger at me and shook her head and patted me on the back when I needed it. Plus she bought lunch because I was pitiful. (Honestly — we agreed that this was so. I was a little pitiful.)

Having mentors is a great blessing especially, I think, for women who have some extra things to overcome. (Like the number of people who think I’m freelancing as a hobby. You know, until my husband gets a real job.)

One of the hardest things in the world for me is to accept help when I don’t have something to trade to make it all even. It makes me feel guilty and vulnerable and like I need to scurry away and hide somewhere. But there are a couple of women in my life (Julia being one, Chris being the other and the one who bought me lunch today) who just won’t let me reject their support and encouragement. I want to be them someday, which is as a good a reason as any to hang in there, right? Because this freelancing thing? It can be ugly and competitive and people will sell you out so if you don’t have some folks who are there to cheer you on, it’s easy to become overwhelmed. And man, I’ve been feeling disoriented and overwhelmed and ready to throw in the towel.

But they won’t let me quit. They believe in me when I’m having trouble believing in myself. (sniff)

I changed servers and it’s down and out. Argh! I’ve got promotional stuff going on next week so it needs to be fixed by then!

But enough about work. Because I’m caught up on work, which means I’m sitting here updating my blog and tonight I’m finally getting my long overdue hair cut in part because of that promotional stuff I’ve got going on.

The kids are out at park day and I’m glad Brett was able to get ‘em there even though I’m sad to miss it. I’m also missing out on hosting our small Thursday potluck but then again, I’ll like getting my hair done and I do need to edit something tonight that I finished about ten minutes ago. (If I look at it now I’ll think it’s perfect and I’ll be wrong so I’m letting it marinate.)

So! There’s this essay I want to write. I’ve been thinking about it since last fall because as you all know, I’m a slow writer except when it’s marketing stuff and then I’m super-speedy. I guess it’s better than the other way around because lemme tell you, marketing pays much better than personal essays.

The essay that I’ve been thinking about for months and months would also conveniently be a book chapter so I’m seeing this as a two birds one stone thing. One of the reasons I want to write it is because it’d be a personal essay that wouldn’t actually share anything PERSONAL  so I think it would be fun/challenging to try to do that.

I want to write about Pennie’s reasons for placing Madison without ever actually talking about Pennie’s reasons for placing Madison since it’s nobody’s business except hers and Madison’s. Instead I want to talk about how we (i.e., me and the reader) can ever really know and also about the fluidity of “knowing” so that Pennie’s reasons can’t be simplified but instead are an inadequate way to describe a huge complex personal decision with the context of a huge complex cultural creation. I want to show that the decision to place Madison — like any life-changing decision — is fluid and our understanding of “why” changes as we change. (Why did I marry Brett? There are a million reasons and every year I look at that decision and see new nuances and outside/inside influences that I didn’t see before.) I also want to use the essay as an exploration of the statistics and as way to talk about stereotypes and realities of birth motherhood as a way to say, “It doesn’t matter why Pennie placed personally but it does matter why women place culturally.” I want to use it as a way to challenge ideas about adoption and first motherhood and also make Pennie more visible to the reader as a whole person with rights and responsibilities without ever actually giving any of her story away. I want to answer people’s question “why?” in a satisfactory but open-ended way that has them understanding why without ever really knowing the answer.

Hopefully that kinda sorta makes sense.

I’m just at the wandering around wondering stage on this. What I have down here is as much as I have down anywhere (mostly scrawled notes) but that’s how I work so I’m stuck with it.

I leave for work in about thirty-ish minutes and I’m trying to get a caffeine buzz going on. No luck yet halfway into my coffee. The project I was working on yesterday is still looming — it’s a lot of research and I think I have most of it done. Now I need to figure out a structure. I’ll be working on it tonight along with a couple of regular little jobs. Basically for the weeks I go on-site, I’ll need to work two jobs and just suck it up. It’s a good thing the on-site job is fun (it’s more or less catalog copy so I get to play with stuff all day, which is why it’s an on-site job — I have to see the products in person).

Madison is too cute this morning. It’s always harder to leave an adorable child. She played in the mud a whole bunch yesterday, which is something that just warms my heart. I was a mud-playing child and sadly Noah — with mild sensory issues — was never one for getting messy. I’ve always felt like he missed out. So coming up from my office and looking out the kitchen window to see Madison right filthy and “cooking” with a big pile of dirt makes me awfully happy.

This weekend a little kid was mean to Madison and said, “No one loves you!” She got hysterical and Noah came to her rescue while I was still trying to get to her. When I picked her up I said, “Madison, lots and lots of people love you. Who are some of the people who love you?” And she sniffed and said, “Pennie!” Remind me to tell Pennie that right after I send out a hit on the mean kid.

They had to do with anxiety. Work anxiety (because I’m going on-site again next week and am having my usual stagefright); marketing anxiety (because I’ve got a speaking engagment in a week and again with the stagefright); friendship anxiety (because I haven’t resolved what is likely to be an unresolvable issue); time anxiety (because I have a lot to do and my ability to get it all done is somewhat hampered by other people’s schedule constraints).

I woke up and stared at the ceiling and worried.

Sometimes I feel like I’m getting away with something and am about to get caught around my work stuff. I like it so much and yet it pays me well so I keep thinking that I’m somehow doing it wrong and the other shoe is about to drop squarely on my head. Then I think that the trade-off is the endless chaos since every day is unpredictable and I’m entirely dependent on my own small self. I mean, working on commission can be scary (and that’s what freelancing is really — making a living by commission).

I met this guy who works for himself and he referred to his past few years of making his own living as a time of “unemployment” because he likes it so much even though he works pretty dang hard. That’s how I feel. How am I paying the bills when I’m unemployed? But then I have a night full of nightmares and say, Oh yeah, this is a fair wage. I forget that the anxiety of freelancing is a downside of the work because I think it’s a problem with me. I wouldn’t do that if I had a “real” job; I’d be able to identify the bad parts as being part of the gig because work is segregated from the rest of life.

Does that confusion make sense?

Like when a client doesn’t pay me it’s pretty easy to say, “Oh that’s a downside of being a freelancer.” But when it’s free-floating anxiety related to work I can’t always shrug it off as going with the territory. And I need to do that because part of my anxiety is that I feel like life is too good and I’m going to be punished for it.

I love my lifestyle so much that it scares me. Why is this? I suppose it’s some neuroses rooted in my childhood or something. I guess I don’t care about the why so much as I hope that I can get better about handling it with practice. I don’t exactly want to take contentment for granted but I’d like to enjoy it more without feeling like I ought to punish myself to balance my happiness and stave off disaster.

So I’ve got a gig coming up with the Greater Columbus Arts Council where I’m going to be talking about making a living from writing and am pulling together what all I’m going to say. Do you guys have any input on what kinds of things you’d want me to address if you were attending a session like this? Here’s the description:

Writer Dawn Friedman will talk about her switch from part-time writer to full-time freelancer and family breadwinner. She will discuss the challenges of balancing artistic and financial needs and share the way she learned to market her job skills her creative self.

Tomorrow is billing day and I need to sit down with Brett and figure out how much one client owes me. This client has paid in dribbles and drabs, which is ok but wreaks havoc on my invoice system because Billable doesn’t have a way to mark invoices as partially paid. I have to go through and mess with ‘em manually and I’ve been avoiding it for too long.

I’m home with the kids today while my husband is at work just like how things used to be but totally different. Brett started today at a Home Depot for three reasons:

1. Possibility of getting help with our insurance;
2. Learning to do some of the things around the house that need to get done and learning with an employee discount;
3. A break from the kids.

Seriously — a break from the kids was a big reason he wanted a job. I hear that.

Meanwhile it looks like my on-site gig, (which amounts to about five days a month across two weeks), might be regular which is what I hoped. At least they’ve already assigned my time to come next month. Perfect! It’s a big chunk of our budget right there and a big relief. Plus it’s fun. I mean really, really fun.

We think we’ll be able to swing the scheduling so that one of us is with the kids while the other is at work but there will surely be times where I’ll have a client meeting when Brett is gone so we’ve got a few back up plans. My sister is always good for some childcare and I volunteered Abby (without speaking to her first but she was game) and there’s Noah’s friend L’s family and the inlaws are back in town, at least for now. So that’s all good although Madison has been periodically showing up in tears to remind us that she never, ever, ever likes to have playdates when one of us is not with her. She says that when she is a mommy she will never, ever, ever leave her kids.

“I hate [job site]! Do all mommies have to go to [job site]? Or do some not go?”

I told her not all mommies go there and she declared that she certainly will not then. I told her this is fine.

I was having some stress earlier this week because someone sent a marketing this or that my way and it was all about getting out there and making zillions of dollars and I looked at it and thought, “I can see a way to market myself with these tools” and I could see how it might work but I could also see that to do it I would have to kinda push and shove some other people who are dabbling in the same sort of thing. And also there’s this marketing tone that’s very, “How much money have YOU made today???” that doesn’t resonate with me AT ALL. In fact, it’s something that kept me leery of marketing communications as a career and I still duck and cover when I show up at a networking meeting and there’s someone at the door glad-handing everyone and saying, “I made six figures in the last six months! How badly do YOU want success???”

The truth is I want some success. This past April with the two missing checks? That’s made me feel a lot less down on the whole money-money-money credo. But — not to be corny — I would be happy with money-money; I don’t need money-money-money. (See, first money covers the bills and the second money puts cash in savings.)

When things were feeling very bad last month, Brett and I sat ourselves down and said, “Can we really do this?” Because it looked like we were on our way to failing. Should Brett go back to a full-time desk job? Would I have to go back to scrambling for nickel-and-dime jobs while the house descended into chaos behind me? We put it all out on the table and decided, “No. We’ll make this work.” (Part of this was because we knew there’d be some very “I told you so” types if we threw in the towel, which made us want to kick freelance ass because we are contrary like that.)

Way back at the beginning of this thing Julia asked me what I wanted from this. Last week she reminded me of this after listening to me angst about not wanting to take over the world. She said, “Dawn, do you remember what your goal was? It was to make enough money to support your habit of being with your family.” (Is that a great line or what?)

This past April scared me so I was thinking, has it scared me enough to head into the dog-eat-dog, high-enthusiasm, take-no-prisoners world of hard-core marketing communications marketing? To elbow my way to the front? To make enemies in the name of getting more work and higher pay-outs? And Julia said, no. Because I don’t need money-money-money when money-money will do.

She also reminded me that I’ve come a long way, baby, in the past year. I know a lot more now and I know which marketing groups seem worth it and which didn’t do much for me so I’m wasting a lot less time smiling stiffly at events. I’ve made friends and contacts and colleagues. I’ve added a whole lot of work to my portfolio. I’ve learned the lingo and how to use it. I’ve learned to listen more than I talk. I’ve got a work wardrobe for the first time in my life and I’ve gained so much confidence that everything feels a lot less hard.

Other accomplishments:

• I’ve had several public speaking gigs and have three more upcoming;
• I’m no longer nervous about returning phone calls to perfect strangers;
• I’m not afraid to turn down work that doesn’t suit me;
• I have people who come to me with work.

That last one, that feels great, lemme tell you.

If this on-site gig sticks around awhile we’ll be in the clear even if someone loses a check (or two) for four (or six) weeks. If Brett likes Home Depot (and I think he will), he’ll be able to get some of the work done around here that’s making him crazy. (Like refinishing our oak floors that weren’t sealed and so are getting trashed; like finishing the basement; like building out an office space for me; like replacing more tile in the crazy bathrooms; like fixing the solar panel thingies on the roof; like rescuing the house from its 50+ year old landscaping.)

And we can support our habit of spending time with each other and with our kids. I know — how selfish are we? But yesterday I worked all morning and then Brett watched three sets of kids for the afternoon while I went thrifting with the moms and then the families all went out to dinner together and Noah sat laughing with the big kids and Madison giggled and fell off her chair with the little kids while the dads talked budgets and the moms talked kids and I thought, “This is what I’m in this for. Friends and family and time enough to work.”

Like everything it’s a balance. I’ll work a zillion hours a week as long as I can do it on my terms — with breaks to eat a sandwich with my husband or watch Noah play lacrosse or give Madison a foggy bath for her runny nose. I’ll hustle and hustle and hustle if I don’t have to sell-out to do it. But I have to stop sometimes to reassess — am I where I want to be and on my way to the next right stop? Today I am. Next week I’ll check again. And on and on and on.