I used to have a full-time job where I worked through lunches and stayed late to complete projects when needed, but when I got home, my husband and I enjoyed a creative explosion of writing, artmaking, documentary film editing, music composition, and whatever else we could cram into our evenings and weekends. Then we started our own busi…
I used to have a full-time job where I worked through lunches and stayed late to complete projects when needed, but when I got home, my husband and I enjoyed a creative explosion of writing, artmaking, documentary film editing, music composition, and whatever else we could cram into our evenings and weekends. Then we started our own business, and all private boundaries disappeared, and I found myself working around the clock to meet deadlines, answering emails from clients in the middle of the night, and springing into action as soon as anything was needed. I put off my own creative work for over a decade.
Then, last year, I started a Substack, and now I spend every possible moment writing, researching, and participating in this community, and I dread when I have to drag myself to work on a client project. Same workspace, same workaholism, but now I am doing my own passion work, and I leap out of bed in the morning and stay up for marathon sessions to finish an article and can’t wait to start on the next one.
I realize this is not the lesson you are stressing in this article, el gato, but for me, this is bliss, and I feel like I’m finally able to fulfill my life’s purpose—provided I can make it sustainable, because there are all those cats to feed.
The difference is your autonomy. You don't feel like a cog in someone else's machine. You built your own machine. That's a distinction that makes a world of difference. Cogs in someone else's machines need that locational boundary. They need to know the job is not them.
Well MAA started working from home with her own business. What you find when you have a business is that you are still beholden to someone (in this case probably clients). And if you are not smack in love with what you are doing (like she is with writing about her passions) then it can become drudgery. You still have to have some boundaries so the passion does not become something you resent or a cause for burnout.
You’re right, Raptor. I don’t think this could ever become drudgery, but I do have to be careful about consecutive marathon sessions as then my body starts rebelling with fatigue, which reminds me, I should crash soon.
Plus, I do hope I will one day have time to do something recreational again like watching a movie, but even that I am tempted to insist be related to my writing ;-)
I hope you get that time too! Selfishly, it would probably signal we have won. I have a strangle hold on that hope.
A side note: A long time ago I had a little blog that I created to amuse my sister. It was not private because I assumed nobody would be interested in reading it. Wrong. Two things came to pass. Many readers put pressure on me to write when I wasn't feeling it. If I missed a day it caused mild panic. That was depressing to me. Also one day a reader of the blog arrived at my door. I was actually out in my backyard, but heard the bell. When I came around she called out the name I used on my blog. I stopped blogging after that. Show no clues about your home location unless you eventually want someone at the door. It happens. Ditto for you Gato.
I know you were being serious, but it DID make me laugh. You are such a warrior. Love that.
If someone arrives at your door, I suggest being very sweet to them. You never know what a scorned fan might do. People be a little deranged sometimes. Hey also - if you write on Blogger they own your writing and can pull down your blog without any notice so all of your material is POOF gone. I wrote about utterly benign topics and one day they shut it down. They reinstated it after I balked (which was hard to do). They never explained why. Read all fine print. Also, someone used some of my posts for a paper in college. The professor wrote me and asked me if I was "x student". So funny and weird the online life.
😹 Glad it made you laugh, Raptor, and you’re right, I was serious, but I also realize it is laughable in that we will likely never defeat tyranny completely as it requires continuous vigilance. That said, I do think we have a chance of ending democide by injection, so maybe I can relax for a minute then ;-)
Thanks for the tips re: stalkers 😆 Very likely, I wouldn’t answer the door since my sleep schedule is so erratic. We also have a door camera and don’t tend to answer the door unless it’s someone we know.
We had a similar experience with OpenSalon. My husband and I had a blog there, plus I had two others, each related to different book projects. We had a huge flurry of activity one year when I had saved up enough vacation to take a month off. Then, when I went back to work, it pretty much languished, partly because the community had degenerated into a gossipy junior high atmosphere, although we did make some amazing connections and found wonderful writing from around the world. Then a few years later, Salon announced that it was detonating OpenSalon, and we couldn't even go into the back end before it was annihilated. I lost drafts for a couple chapters I had never published as well as treasured exchanges with dozens of dear friends.
Gasp! Losing work for a book would send me into a depression. When I lose something I wrote that I loved (or others appreciated) I always feel like I will never be able to get that thought back or turn a phrase as well as I did round one.
I utterly hope we can end democide by injection. If they are exposed for the fraud and how many people they are killing (and knowing full well that they are) now, maybe the deluded with wake up. I keep wondering what will be the revelation that will shock them into reality.
I wholeheartedly empathize with your feelings about loss of work (writing or otherwise) and am still mourning documents lost due to failed hard drives in the past.
Regarding Open Salon, I should clarify that it was only one chapter for each of my two blogs (two chapters total), and I do have earlier drafts in my files—I just couldn’t remember whether I’d incorporated the latest changes I made directly at the blog and have never checked as those projects have been long-dormant, and I sort of dreaded opening them in case I had indeed lost my revisions.
I, too, am still trying to figure out what on earth will shake them out of their hypnosis. More are emerging from the fog every day, but it’s taking far longer than we have before totalitarianism engulfs the globe.
I agree 100%. Myself, my partner and my adult son all are self employed and work from home. Many of the issues that el gato malo brings up in this essay ring true for me, especially the lack of boundaries between work and home life. I find myself scheduling zoom meetings on weekends and answering calls at all hours of the day and evening, but because I am my own boss, I can also find balance and take time when I need to unplug from work. It is a delicate balance though and I take el gato's words to heart.
Actually, El Gato mentions that he is similarly self directed.
I quit my perfectly lucrative job to be self employed because I was miserable when I didn’t feel self directed. So I am in the same situation.
This is what truly infuriated me about the technocratic response to the pandemic. The government decided that it was perfectly acceptable to force people to stop their chosen profession and just give them money. No. Even this post by El Gato makes the mistake of trying to universalize the experience of working at home as causing burnout.
Capitalism has some major problems, but it hopefully gives people the option of finding a way of making a living that is agreeable. The “new normal” technocracy is just going to result in the type of great resignation that we are seeing due to the loss of choice, whether the choice is to be self employed or work a regimented 9 to 5.
Yes, being self-directed is vital for me—and not having a boss (I’m responsible to clients but don’t feel I report to them). And even though I experienced the erasure of personal boundaries when we started our business, I would still never want to return to a day job as it is a joy being able to work at home together with our kitties and control our own (constantly fluctuating) schedule.
I would imagine that only to be as nice as you describe when you have a house, though, including a room that's only for work, where you can just shut the door.
At least for me it's like that. Working from home feels quite odd right now, as I don't have that. Not even an own corner just for work, I'm out of corners ;)
It does help making things better w.r.t. my rather late sleep phase, though. Not having to waste time on the road.
Actually, at that time, we had a minuscule apartment that was packed with books and so much crap, we only had a tiny little space in the living room to set up our shared workspace, so I can relate. A “room of one’s own” definitely helps but isn’t 100% necessary, although it would be more challenging if you have roommates engaged in other activities.
The "shut the door" thing was also meant for "closing work for today / weekend", out of sight, out of mind, not for shutting out noise from flat mates - I couldn't have those anyway, given my sleep schedule that would likely wreck me ^^
"but when I got home, ... creative explosion of writing, artmaking, documentary film editing, music composition, ..."
Gee, where did you take the mental energy for that after an, presumably, mentally exhausting workday, and then creative stuff to boot... I don't feel like doing anything on a workday after work.
Maybe you haven’t found your passion yet. Once you do, you’ll race home to get going on it—provided you don’t have a job that sucks too much out of you (in which case that might need looking at).
Simon Rodia conceived and built the Watts Towers every day when he got home from work for many years. He was in such a hurry to get home and get to work that he found traffic very frustrating. Then one day he had a brainstorm. He put a police strawberry light on top of his car and flashed it to get people out of the way. It worked great until one day someone told him the police were looking for him. He dug a hole on his property and buried the car. Problem solved!
Personally, I have found the only way to pursue what I want to do is live where I work. I need a lot of tools, a lot of materials, make a lot of noise and fire and I love living with it all. I don’t want to leave work, it is too interesting there.
Define "passion". My name on here is not for naught. I am interested in a lot of things :D I was hit much harder by the toilet paper shortage than others - I need those for my project TODO lists, nothing else is long enough! (ok ok, actually I upgraded to a computer, a... while... ago... but, the idea of the statement is still right)
Haha, in that case, maybe you already are doing your passion and don’t realize it, then! Or maybe you would feel it’s more creative if you assimilated the information you are hogging into blog posts or something like that :-)
Actually I'm a dilettante maker of music, and builder of things related to it. It's those kind of projects that have taken quite a backseat for a couple years. Well, especially 2 years. I resent the powers that be for doing to us what they're doing, but on top of that, I resent them for forcing me to make some new topic areas my "hobby", that was not by choice. (some would argue it was, I could also buy a TV again and hook myself up to the matrix, but I don't like the zombie feel)
I used to have a full-time job where I worked through lunches and stayed late to complete projects when needed, but when I got home, my husband and I enjoyed a creative explosion of writing, artmaking, documentary film editing, music composition, and whatever else we could cram into our evenings and weekends. Then we started our own business, and all private boundaries disappeared, and I found myself working around the clock to meet deadlines, answering emails from clients in the middle of the night, and springing into action as soon as anything was needed. I put off my own creative work for over a decade.
Then, last year, I started a Substack, and now I spend every possible moment writing, researching, and participating in this community, and I dread when I have to drag myself to work on a client project. Same workspace, same workaholism, but now I am doing my own passion work, and I leap out of bed in the morning and stay up for marathon sessions to finish an article and can’t wait to start on the next one.
I realize this is not the lesson you are stressing in this article, el gato, but for me, this is bliss, and I feel like I’m finally able to fulfill my life’s purpose—provided I can make it sustainable, because there are all those cats to feed.
The difference is your autonomy. You don't feel like a cog in someone else's machine. You built your own machine. That's a distinction that makes a world of difference. Cogs in someone else's machines need that locational boundary. They need to know the job is not them.
Well MAA started working from home with her own business. What you find when you have a business is that you are still beholden to someone (in this case probably clients). And if you are not smack in love with what you are doing (like she is with writing about her passions) then it can become drudgery. You still have to have some boundaries so the passion does not become something you resent or a cause for burnout.
Wish you luck MAA.
You’re right, Raptor. I don’t think this could ever become drudgery, but I do have to be careful about consecutive marathon sessions as then my body starts rebelling with fatigue, which reminds me, I should crash soon.
Plus, I do hope I will one day have time to do something recreational again like watching a movie, but even that I am tempted to insist be related to my writing ;-)
I hope you get that time too! Selfishly, it would probably signal we have won. I have a strangle hold on that hope.
A side note: A long time ago I had a little blog that I created to amuse my sister. It was not private because I assumed nobody would be interested in reading it. Wrong. Two things came to pass. Many readers put pressure on me to write when I wasn't feeling it. If I missed a day it caused mild panic. That was depressing to me. Also one day a reader of the blog arrived at my door. I was actually out in my backyard, but heard the bell. When I came around she called out the name I used on my blog. I stopped blogging after that. Show no clues about your home location unless you eventually want someone at the door. It happens. Ditto for you Gato.
Yikes, that’s terrifying!! Thanks for the warning 😬
And yes, you’re exactly right—I keep telling myself I can relax once we defeat tyranny and end democide.
I know you were being serious, but it DID make me laugh. You are such a warrior. Love that.
If someone arrives at your door, I suggest being very sweet to them. You never know what a scorned fan might do. People be a little deranged sometimes. Hey also - if you write on Blogger they own your writing and can pull down your blog without any notice so all of your material is POOF gone. I wrote about utterly benign topics and one day they shut it down. They reinstated it after I balked (which was hard to do). They never explained why. Read all fine print. Also, someone used some of my posts for a paper in college. The professor wrote me and asked me if I was "x student". So funny and weird the online life.
😹 Glad it made you laugh, Raptor, and you’re right, I was serious, but I also realize it is laughable in that we will likely never defeat tyranny completely as it requires continuous vigilance. That said, I do think we have a chance of ending democide by injection, so maybe I can relax for a minute then ;-)
Thanks for the tips re: stalkers 😆 Very likely, I wouldn’t answer the door since my sleep schedule is so erratic. We also have a door camera and don’t tend to answer the door unless it’s someone we know.
We had a similar experience with OpenSalon. My husband and I had a blog there, plus I had two others, each related to different book projects. We had a huge flurry of activity one year when I had saved up enough vacation to take a month off. Then, when I went back to work, it pretty much languished, partly because the community had degenerated into a gossipy junior high atmosphere, although we did make some amazing connections and found wonderful writing from around the world. Then a few years later, Salon announced that it was detonating OpenSalon, and we couldn't even go into the back end before it was annihilated. I lost drafts for a couple chapters I had never published as well as treasured exchanges with dozens of dear friends.
Gasp! Losing work for a book would send me into a depression. When I lose something I wrote that I loved (or others appreciated) I always feel like I will never be able to get that thought back or turn a phrase as well as I did round one.
I utterly hope we can end democide by injection. If they are exposed for the fraud and how many people they are killing (and knowing full well that they are) now, maybe the deluded with wake up. I keep wondering what will be the revelation that will shock them into reality.
I wholeheartedly empathize with your feelings about loss of work (writing or otherwise) and am still mourning documents lost due to failed hard drives in the past.
Regarding Open Salon, I should clarify that it was only one chapter for each of my two blogs (two chapters total), and I do have earlier drafts in my files—I just couldn’t remember whether I’d incorporated the latest changes I made directly at the blog and have never checked as those projects have been long-dormant, and I sort of dreaded opening them in case I had indeed lost my revisions.
I, too, am still trying to figure out what on earth will shake them out of their hypnosis. More are emerging from the fog every day, but it’s taking far longer than we have before totalitarianism engulfs the globe.
I agree 100%. Myself, my partner and my adult son all are self employed and work from home. Many of the issues that el gato malo brings up in this essay ring true for me, especially the lack of boundaries between work and home life. I find myself scheduling zoom meetings on weekends and answering calls at all hours of the day and evening, but because I am my own boss, I can also find balance and take time when I need to unplug from work. It is a delicate balance though and I take el gato's words to heart.
Exactly!
Actually, El Gato mentions that he is similarly self directed.
I quit my perfectly lucrative job to be self employed because I was miserable when I didn’t feel self directed. So I am in the same situation.
This is what truly infuriated me about the technocratic response to the pandemic. The government decided that it was perfectly acceptable to force people to stop their chosen profession and just give them money. No. Even this post by El Gato makes the mistake of trying to universalize the experience of working at home as causing burnout.
Capitalism has some major problems, but it hopefully gives people the option of finding a way of making a living that is agreeable. The “new normal” technocracy is just going to result in the type of great resignation that we are seeing due to the loss of choice, whether the choice is to be self employed or work a regimented 9 to 5.
Yes, being self-directed is vital for me—and not having a boss (I’m responsible to clients but don’t feel I report to them). And even though I experienced the erasure of personal boundaries when we started our business, I would still never want to return to a day job as it is a joy being able to work at home together with our kitties and control our own (constantly fluctuating) schedule.
You also get to choose your clients, or at least choose not to work with the unpleasant ones again. The boss isn't as easy to dismiss.
💯
I would imagine that only to be as nice as you describe when you have a house, though, including a room that's only for work, where you can just shut the door.
At least for me it's like that. Working from home feels quite odd right now, as I don't have that. Not even an own corner just for work, I'm out of corners ;)
It does help making things better w.r.t. my rather late sleep phase, though. Not having to waste time on the road.
Actually, at that time, we had a minuscule apartment that was packed with books and so much crap, we only had a tiny little space in the living room to set up our shared workspace, so I can relate. A “room of one’s own” definitely helps but isn’t 100% necessary, although it would be more challenging if you have roommates engaged in other activities.
The "shut the door" thing was also meant for "closing work for today / weekend", out of sight, out of mind, not for shutting out noise from flat mates - I couldn't have those anyway, given my sleep schedule that would likely wreck me ^^
Haha, gotcha.
"but when I got home, ... creative explosion of writing, artmaking, documentary film editing, music composition, ..."
Gee, where did you take the mental energy for that after an, presumably, mentally exhausting workday, and then creative stuff to boot... I don't feel like doing anything on a workday after work.
Maybe you haven’t found your passion yet. Once you do, you’ll race home to get going on it—provided you don’t have a job that sucks too much out of you (in which case that might need looking at).
“You’ll race home…”
Simon Rodia conceived and built the Watts Towers every day when he got home from work for many years. He was in such a hurry to get home and get to work that he found traffic very frustrating. Then one day he had a brainstorm. He put a police strawberry light on top of his car and flashed it to get people out of the way. It worked great until one day someone told him the police were looking for him. He dug a hole on his property and buried the car. Problem solved!
Personally, I have found the only way to pursue what I want to do is live where I work. I need a lot of tools, a lot of materials, make a lot of noise and fire and I love living with it all. I don’t want to leave work, it is too interesting there.
🤣🤣🤣
I love that anecdote and am saving it!!
Define "passion". My name on here is not for naught. I am interested in a lot of things :D I was hit much harder by the toilet paper shortage than others - I need those for my project TODO lists, nothing else is long enough! (ok ok, actually I upgraded to a computer, a... while... ago... but, the idea of the statement is still right)
Haha, in that case, maybe you already are doing your passion and don’t realize it, then! Or maybe you would feel it’s more creative if you assimilated the information you are hogging into blog posts or something like that :-)
Actually I'm a dilettante maker of music, and builder of things related to it. It's those kind of projects that have taken quite a backseat for a couple years. Well, especially 2 years. I resent the powers that be for doing to us what they're doing, but on top of that, I resent them for forcing me to make some new topic areas my "hobby", that was not by choice. (some would argue it was, I could also buy a TV again and hook myself up to the matrix, but I don't like the zombie feel)
Sounds intriguing! Makes me think of Brian Dewan (http://briandewan.com/) as he builds his own instruments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnOQtUemjG8
Never return to the Matrix, no matter how desperate you get!!
Yep. My substack is nowhere near sustainable.
Yeah, I have a long ways to go but am hoping to get there eventually as we only have so much room left on our credit cards ;-)