I'm still job-hunting and every day at my current job kills my soul a little bit more. I feel like I'm spinning my wheels. I'm in limbo as far as my training for the next 'level' in the company, so to speak, and even though it comes with a slight (very slight) pay raise, I feel no excitement for it. I'm really just doing it for the money, and I need more than just money to feel that my job -- that my time -- is worth it. I'm not feeling fulfilled at all, and the rush I used to get in making X amount of drinks or burgers in a certain timeframe just isn't doing it for me anymore. The thrill of accomplishment is wearing off, especially now that I'm being more consistent with finishing dance films and I have Kyrie fully rewritten. Those are huge, complex, creative, challenging projects, and burgers are just... burgers.
However, I currently live in a tiny town with no real, fulfilling jobs. I've been applying for remote online 'virtual assistant' and copywriting jobs, but so far I'm striking out.
I've been looking into being a freelance writer more seriously. Until recently, I've been so overwhelmed by even the idea of looking it up that I haven't even Googled it. But I'm started to do some research, and... it actually looks pretty fun. Even some of the lower-end pay rates I've seen would pay many times more per week than my current job. It would definitely be enough to cut my hours at least, if I can get some consistent work. I'm testing out how consistently I can generate ideas and write articles through the month of December, and in the early part of next year my plan is to start actually pitching.
Freelance writing would be the ultimate dream... to wake up at a decent hour of the morning, sit in front of my computer and type for a few hours while listening to fun music, then spend the rest of the day spending time with my husband or working on dance projects. If I'm able to land a dance teaching gig, so much the better -- that's more consistent, something I actually am passionate about, and doesn't require me to get up at 6am and walk to work in the freezing cold and stand on an awful concrete floor all day with managers treating me like I don't know how to do my job and then go to bed at some boring early hour just to do it all over again. And again. And again.
It's not even like I would slave over the computer all day. I can totally put out an 800-1k word article in a half hour and edit it in a day or so. Fifteen years of NaNoWriMo and a five-year college degree have trained me well on that point. I would love my work a lot more, I would be far less tired, and maybe our marriage would improve with the additional time and energy I would have for my husband because it's not being drained out of me at a soulless job that demands so much but has nothing to offer.
Time is precious. I don't want to spend my precious time making burgers that people eat in ten minutes and forget about. I want to spend as much of my time feeling fulfilled as I possibly can. For me, that means writing about things -- helping readers make sense of the world. That means dancing -- the only way I have found any modicum of true peace. That means making crochet projects and paintings -- things that make our world and the worlds of my loved ones just a little bit brighter. Thirty-two hours a week at a job where you're just a cog in a machine is too much time out of such a short life. I could be doing so much with that time and I'm just standing there asking people what they want in their coffee. There's got to be more to life than that. I know there is... I've seen it.
The arts impact people. People carry art with them for the rest of their lives. I want to be a part of that.
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