Saturday, August 12, 2006
Shouting At The Wall
I have a slightly psychotic cat who every once in a while - for no obvious reason to her owner - faces the wall and lets out a plaintive yowl. Sometimes to make her point she will rake her claws down the wall as if to shake loose her inner demons.
I am sure the animal behaviorists will say that this is natural behavior that has its counterpart in the wild. The animal psychologist on the other hand might anthropomorphize her actions by attributing such human emotions as frustration, boredom, or anger. She's an indoor cat wanting to be outside and so I am thinking those emotions might be very real indeed.
As I talk to people working for the dark side of corporate work I think of them facing the wall and having a good yowl themselves. Nor are freelancers immune to those pent up feelings when their professional lives are not quite working as they would want or had anticipated.
Of course most of us don't yowl out loud but inner yowling can be identified through the following symptoms:
1. You have a job that pays well but every time you get on the elevator in the morning you get a knot in your stomach. The job no longer challenges you, there is no room for advancement, and your boss is an idiot.
2. You are a successful freelancer but these days you are seized by writer's block, fear, boredom, lethargy,procrastination or any combination of the above.
Any of this describe you?
The good news is that these feelings are perfectly normal and we all have them from time to time.
The bad news is that these feelings are perfectly normal and we all have them from time to time.
Over the next few issues of FF I am going to going to deal with those issues and possible ways out of the dilemma - whether you are in full time mode and want out, or in freelance mode and don't know what to do next.
In the meantime let me offer two little pieces of advice that might help get you out of the doldrums.
One of the reasons we want to shout at the wall - literally or metaphorically - is that we often see no way out of our dilemma. And no light at the end of the tunnel. We are trapped.
That was how I felt about 15 years ago - the last time I worked the dark side of the street. I knew I wanted to freelance but couldn't see how I could make the jump. Too many financial commitments and too much fear of failure. One simple little visual trick helped me enormously.
I put a large year-at-a-glance calendar on the wall opposite my desk. I put a large red circle around a date exactly one year later. On that day I would leave the dark side, I told myself.
It was tremendously helpful in a psychological sense. The next day I walked into the office and said "gosh, less than a year to go in this job. I can do anything for less than a year.
Well you can guess what happened. As the weeks went by, the shorter the period I had left.
As the months went by I began to realize that "holy cow, if I am leaving in six months, I better get busy doing all those things I must do so I can hit the freelance trail running."
It was a pretty amazing visual cue that motivated and nagged at me every time I glanced up from my office desk.
So for you darksiders out there yearning to be free, put that calendar up there, circle your freedom date and see what happens. You best be prepared to tell your boss what the red circle is for when he/she walks in your office.
For frustrated freelancers who are shouting at their own inner demons, the solutions can be a little trickier.
First you have to be able to identify what those demons are. Not enough money? Working too hard? Hate your clients? No longer interested in the subject matter you've become an expert in? Don't like the genre of writing you specialize in? Just plain frustrated? A starting point for you might be to put on your wall the one change you want to make in the coming year. Just one thing. As that wretched Dr. Phil might say you can't change it if you can't identify it. So find the "it". Just one for a start.
So there you go. Lessons our cats can tell us. Howl at the wall once in a while. And then tear it down.
