On the way home from this morning’s business networking group meeting, my accountant (who also happens to be a fellow networker) and I fell into a conversation about the many quotidian distractions from paying work. I mentioned that a prospective client, who I thought had dropped off the radar four months ago, suddenly resurfaced…assuming I would index her 400-page tome on Anglo-Saxon maritime history at the drop of a hat. Her hat, of course.
And that this would come in the middle of the four-week course I’m teaching, the one that crams 16 weeks of instruction into 18 class days. And that I’d agreed to do it for a pittance — I mean, practically Fiverr wages! — in an effort to hang onto the entity that refers these obnoxious projects to me.
We reflected on the appearance, this morning, of a retired professor of economics who craves advice and help on a projected 400-page+ (typeset!) magnum opus, and who asked what I could do for him.
And that my associate editor, who makes it possible for me to take on these ridiculous projects, will soon be winging her way to China for a business/pleasure trip — smack in the middle of the four-week course and the 400-page Anglo-Saxon maritime indexing nightmare project.
And what a joy the advent of the new, brilliant cleaning lady proved to be, since she relieved me from a full day of tedious housecleaning work, which I then filled by completing a tedious (but paying) project.
And then I said, “You know, the problem with all these editorial jobs and teaching jobs is that they take away from what I really want to do, which is to write my own goddamn books, get them online, and build a micro-publishing house to promulgate future works of my own and of a select few clients.”
• How can I count the ways the prospect of indexing 400+ pages of Anglo-Saxon maritime history makes me cringe?
• How can I say how much I don’t want to fill the month of June with the Campbell’s Condensed Soup version of freshman comp?
• How can I express my delight at the prospect of editing 400+ (typeset!) pages of an economic history of the early Catholic church? (Yesh; that would from origins to 1350.)
• And how much do I want to know how the Okan and A′oan bands, residents of a dire post-Apocalyptic future, get from the sere desert below the eastern face of the Sierras to their home counties and what, if anything, they make of the Sasquatch the young lesbian fur trapper kills in the act of saving Fallon Mayr of Cheyne Wells’s ranch foreman’s life?
• How curious am I about whether the trapper and the foreman get it on?
• And given the choice between indexing, editing, and preparing my own copy for publication, how clearly can I articulate which I would rather do?????
Accountant, as she’s opening the door to climb out of the car and wander off to her own office, says to me THIS:
You know, you are well set. You do not need to do any paying work to live comfortably for the rest of your life, especially considering how frugal you are. It is ridiculous for you to keep doing work you dislike. You could, quite safely, quit the editing business, quit the teaching, and devote all your time to writing and publishing your own books. Why on earth don’t you do it?
Why, indeed?
I … don’t often see accountants telling their clients to stop worrying about bringing in income. And if she’s right, would you seriously consider dropping at least some of the current work madness? I mean, it seems like dropping even at least one of those things would mean a huge relief and let up on your stress, not to mention allow you to deal with your own writing.
Dropping it OR CHARGING MORE, and letting the lower paying clients drop you. Doesn’t have to be all or nothing.
It’s an amazing concept, isn’t it? And imagine being able to indulge one’s infinite unemployability by filling one’s time writing unpublishable novels? 😀
Yeah, one of the problems with the indexing condundrum is that I underbid severely — at half the going rate per indexable page. That means I CAN’T FARM IT OUT! No one will even look at it. So I either have to tell this woman, like right now, that she needs to find someone else, or I’ll have to suck it up and do the project for peanuts. Neither of those is a desirable choice.
Hmmmm, where were you when I was trying to get my hubby and I to save for these golden years?!
I wonder if part of your working is habit and maybe you have rediscovered you really want to work on your own stuff, but only rediscovered this when you took on the new job of editing, etc. for others?
How terrific that your accountant has put before you this new and possibly scary option.
Best wishes on making the best decision for you.
Well, ever since I’ve had to actually make a living (as opposed to being a conspicuous bauble gracing a lawyer’s public image), work has been a way of putting food on the table, not a calling. At first the teaching was not too obnoxious, but as morale at GDU sank under The Raven’s leadership and as the West campus expanded to take on lower-division students so that I had to start teaching freshman comp courses, I came to dislike it. Editorial work is a huge improvement over teaching. But…it’s still work. Ick.
yay!
Hope you can feel comfortable powering down on the stuff that’s keeping you from your real work.
The prospect comes to seem more do-able as you leave the bag lady syndrome behind…