Friday, October 2, 2009

Can't walk away from work -- and wouldn't want to

I’m finding it increasingly difficult these days to separate work time from non-work time. When I was employed by a big company and went to an office for eight hours a day, it was easy. At 5 PM, or 5:20 PM, or sometimes even 6 or later – but in any case, at a particular time – I clicked on the “log out” icon, snapped off my monitor, picked up my briefcase and went home, and work was over for the day. Sure, sometimes I had more work to do at night or over the weekend. But even then, it had distinct parameters. I knew what tasks or projects I needed to finish – one article to revise for the company newsletter; one memo from the CEO to proofread – and once I was done with that task, I could again walk away from my work.

Now, it’s different. I’m self-employed, but this is more about deadlines than money. I always have so many different projects open at once, just as I always have so many windows on my computer open at once. And a lot of times, it’s the communication with other players on the project that keeps me from disconnecting. If I have two hours of work on an article to do, I can sit down and do it and be done, but so often I’m waiting for an answer from an editor, or waiting for a story subject to get back to me about a photo opportunity.

Right now it’s Friday night, but I don’t feel done for the week at all. I’m writing a newspaper piece about a non-profit that just produced a cookbook, and I’m waiting for quotes from two of the volunteers who helped with the project. I’m also working on a story about a group of dads who formed an offshoot of the PTA in their town, and I’m waiting for the dads to agree on a time and place to have the photographer take their picture. Meanwhile, the municipal management consultant I work for needs revisions on a survey that is supposed to be distributed early next week, and I still have to finish drafting minutes from the September meeting for the volunteer board for which I serve as clerk.

But let me clarify that I realize I’m no busier than anyone else with a normal freelance workload, and I’m a lot less busy than plenty of people. And actually, I like the steady continuous flow of my work life. When I worked 9 to 5 and snapped my briefcase shut at the end of the day, it was work I disliked and had no interest in thinking about off hours. These days, I'm so engaged with my work that I wouldn’t want to walk away from it on the weekends if I could. For example, I’ve made a personal commitment to try to blog five days a week and take weekends off, but last Saturday I enjoyed my run so much and had so many thoughts about it that I did a Saturday blog entry anyway. And rather than thinking “I can never get away from writing,” I felt lucky that I love writing so much and that I have so many opportunities to do it.

And the same is true this weekend. I look forward to continuing the cookbook story and getting started on the dads’ PTA article. It will feel good to get the meeting minutes completed, and I’ll be relieved to send off the municipal management survey. And while I’m doing all of those things, I’ll be generating new ideas and pursuing new assignments. Writing is not a 9-to-5 job; it’s something I’m thinking about all the time. I know a lot of other professions are like that as well. But I just feel so fortunate that my work life and leisure time don’t really need to be separated out in my mind, that they blur together as inextricable components of the life I’m happy to be leading.

1 comment:

  1. Nice post~
    Someone once said to me, "Being a freelance writer is like having homework for the rest of your life."

    Best,
    Irene

    ReplyDelete