In one month I will celebrate one year a full-time writer, so I should probably have a handle on how it works. To some degree, I’d say that I do.
I know that I need to wake up by 7:30AM, latest, for maximum morning productivity, so I usually pop out around 8. I know that working out, even for 20 minutes, is the best way for me to start the day, so I do 30 minutes every other day. I’ve found that one cup of coffee is just right, two cups is way too much, and three is just right. I’ve determined that if I wear anything that looks or feels similar to pajamas, I will get absolutely nothing done but wearing slippers all day makes me golden. And I know that I go stir-crazy if I don’t leave the house for at least a few hours during the day…to buy something.
The thing I still can’t seem to figure out is how to not feel guilty/weird/wrong/lazy any time I’m not working during the work day. It’s like some former full-time worker PTSD.
Case in point: last week I got stuck while working on a feature film outline. I did my freelance fashion writing in the morning, ate my home made salad while watching one Netflix episode of The Wonder Years, then prepped for a TV pitch in the early afternoon. So I finally started in on this feature idea I’ve been developing around 2:30-3:00. By 4:00 I wanted to throw my computer across the room. Nothing was working. All my ideas were crap. Why didn’t I just become a magazine writer? Those articles are SO short! And so I took the the Internet…where I found that a movie I’ve been dying to see just so happened to be playing at a movie theater just down the street…at 4:30pm.
At 4:25 I was sitting alone in a dark room with a small bag of popcorn in my lap feeling a very strange combo of awesome and miserable. I was indulging in every full-time worker’s fantasy – a mid-afternoon matinee. It only costs $6, as if the universe is saying, fine, you win. Hell it was my own fantasy for the seven years that I spent employed full-time.
As that full-time employee I said things like, “breaks in the work day are healthy! Taking in art is important! Studying film as an aspiring filmmaker is really important! Damn the man!!” But now that I’m only the other side – finally able to create a work-life balance – I can’t enjoy the non-work half of the see-saw because I feel too guilty that I’m not working!
Maybe it’s like getting over a break up? It takes half the span of your career to settle into not having a career? Or maybe it’s a deep-seeded American compulsion to always be productive even if what you’re producing is less meaningful than what you’d get out of sitting in a park and reading a book?
I’m not sure, and if the break-up metaphor is correct, I have 3.5 more years before I’ll have it more figure out. So for now I think I’ll keep the mid-week matinees in check…and the manicures…and the quick trips to Target…and the 2 hour lunches.
Or, on second thought, maybe I should just actually get out of bed at 7:30 and drink one more cup of coffee?
Jessie Rosen
Jessie Rosen resides physically in LA and mentally in NY. She writes scripts, books, articles, sex stories, branded content and killer e-mails.
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Glad to know I’m not alone. The guilt is remarkable – and so distracting to actually getting things done! Thanks for sharing. 🙂
Glad to have read this. I can so relate. I’m a professor in a university which has always been a dream of mine. And now that I have time to have coffee with friends at 10am or 2pm or go the library and read a book after my classes, I punish myself by not doing all these because I think about what an 8-5 employee would do.
Within the past couple of months I have made the decision to have a go at my dream of being a freelance writer, and I am definitely having problems with the issues you mentioned in this post. However, it’s ironic because, as a result of guilt over not working ‘enough,’ I’m working at least 2 more hours than I did as a full-time worker. I find it is especially difficult to not try to assimilate into that routine as my fiance works a 9-to-5 in an office.
Reading this makes me feel better about myself. I just quit my full-time job to start my own business, and I feel this guilt constantly. I am so glad I found your blog. I randomly picked it to review in a class project I had and have been following it ever since.