Today I was talking to a friend and catching up, which I do often because I have moved around a lot and have a lot of friends who are not in my immediate area.
“What Have you been doing recently?”
This question is difficult for me to answer. Honestly all I’m doing is working and steeming. In the past I would feel a bit guilty answering this. I still want to do more artistic stuff and I had a negative association with working to live. I associated it with being bossed around and doing things that were good for the market, even if they are not good for the world.
Something has changed though. I like working now. Sure, I wish I was paid more but for the first time I see a clear path to quickly increasing my income without changing much. I still work for a company but it’s only 18-20 hours a week in order to keep my visa. The rest of my work is freelance now.
I teach. I used to get hung up on the fact that I don’t care all that much about the subject that I teach. Now I realize that I can offer much more than that. I help students understand the world better and help them develop themselves as people. Maybe one day I’ll really make the change and call myself a “life coach” because that’s essentially what I am, even when I’m teaching language or guitar.
I teach empowerment and how the student can come to the teacher for guidance without relying on them, how they can achieve their goal With more independence. I teach people to be more confident and overcome what is holding them back because that’s what I’ve been through, and it’s often what is stoping my students from learning more effectively.
There are things I don’t like but after becoming freelance I feel that most of that is under my control. I can adjust my schedule as I like and deal with both the consequences and the benefits of my decisions.
For the longest time I wanted to be paid for building a sense of community and connecting with people. Now I realize it was right in front of me the whole time. And I’ll still do llots of other stuff too,
I hope within a year I can double my salary without putting in many more hours of energy into work every week. If I can, that will be exactly where I want to be and I’ll be able to travel more often, save for the future and build some things I’ve wanted to build for a long time.
So no, I don’t really have time to go out and party so often, I’m busy working. And I like it.