Almost unemployed...

This has been quite the year for employment.

I don’t mean to underplay that, either. It has been quite the year.

I began the year with a terrific job at a place called The Write Connection. (I only mention the name since they’re out of business.) After a few months, however, the owner hired a new office manager who turned out to be crazy and who ran the whole place into the ground. Just lovely. Then, I worked for a fledgling ISP and a law office. They didn’t work out.

Now, I’m working for a trampoline company. Yep, you heard that right. It’s nice to be working somewhere that makes such a fun, wholesome, and enjoyable (if potentially life-threatening) product.

But then, the other day, everything went quiet and I couldn’t get any replies to my emails. I found myself caught in a kind of terror because I realized just how sick I was of having to find a new employer. Sure, I’m a freelance worker with my focus mostly on my books, but all the same I take my freelance work seriously as well. What had happened? I wondered. What went wrong?

Turned out… nothing. It was just that kind of day. But it was a day that clarified some things for me in my mind.

For a long time, I’ve talked about how important my writing career is for me and how my freelance work is only on the side to help pay some bills. What I didn’t realize, or at least what I wasn’t admitting, was how important my freelance work is as well.

I mean, I put a lot of work into that. And when it’s something I can take pride in – as opposed to the law firm that just made me feel dirty – I would feel terrible losing it.

It’s a strange revelation but nice to know in a way, not that I don’t want to lose my job but that I actually care about what I do. It’s easy to be cynical and nice to know that hasn’t happened.

Not yet.