Freedom has a cost. The trajectory of my professional life has gone from being a secondary math and science teacher to an independent contractor who writes, edits and sales insurance on her own schedule from home. Along the way, some companies I’ve worked for have tried their best to recreate sweat-shop conditions in my home. For other companies, they’ve become less lucrative over time.
The latest variation of this theme originally sounded positive: Be patient.
Normally, if a situation has caused me to panic or be impatient, telling me to “be patient” wouldn’t be magical words that would suddenly alleviate my concern. Yet, I realized this latest technology glitch would eventually be resolved. And then it was announced that it was fixed, but I still experienced the same problem. Then another glitch compounded the problem.
The territory manager told me to be patient. Take some down time.
The only problem with that is that other people were still making money. I even asked which other money-making opportunities I could do within the company until the glitches were resolved.
Be patient.
I took matters into my own hands. I called my former supervisor in the department I’d just left to switch me back, which he did about 30 minutes later. It was all a matter of switching my automatic dialer from one job to another.
All the while, I’d been job searching for weeks, beginning with a copyediting job I saw in one of my favorite weekly publications. At that point, I had to do something I hadn’t done in a few years: update my resume.
Oh the anguish! I’d said I’d never do that bullshit again, which was precisely why I had to do it again. When will I ever learn not to tempt the devil?
To ease the pain of the process, which included typing up a cover letter, I sipped some Malbec. In the end, I dialed a lifeline and read my cover letter to a friend just to make sure it wasn’t just the wine talking.
To get more mileage, I applied to other writing/editing jobs. A few weeks later when the glitches hit, I looked into other telecommuting insurance jobs.
I was in damn near panic mode when, after a week of hardly making any money, the glitches still had not been addressed. Fortunately, when I returned to my former position, some things had improved.
I worked a few hours on a Saturday just to play catch up. I’d just paid the IRS and then spent a week barely making in money with the sage advice to just to be patient.
Ain’t that some shit? The person who told me to be patient would probably have had a much greater reaction than I if his ass went a week without making hardly any money. Yet, his pay wasn’t affected at all by the glitches. Plus, his “be patient” reply wasn’t truly something to comfort me or provide a solution. It was one of those trite comments people say when they’re not actually going to anything.
But like I said, freedom has a cost. To be free means to work the smartest hustle I can without even a thought of there being some knight in shining armor to rescue me. Honestly, I’d probably give him a hard time anyway.
One of my saving graces is being an academic. I’m nothing if not studious, so no matter how many times I have to reinvent myself or learn a new trick (or update my damn resume), it’s all in pursuit of remaining on the right side of evolution.