having a quiet moment of gratitude while i nosh on this froyo. a year ago I was tentatively stepping out of my safe-but-not-entirely-fulfilling salaried job doing communications gruntwork at a labor union and into the uncertain world of flexible, freelance, and remote work.Â
i started by teaching ESL classes online, nervous both about teaching and at the prospect of staying in this placeholder job for longer than i wanted to. since then i’ve gradually switched over to writing and editing full-time. i’m visiting with family this week, traveling to dc in a couple weeks, planning a trip to ecuador for the late fall, and gearing up move back to nyc after the summer. all the while, every month, my ratio of copywriting-to-pay-the-bills assignments vs. blogging-about-things-i-care-deeply-about assignments shifts a little bit more toward the latter. friends and loved ones turn to me for advice about how to get started freelancing, and i actually feel qualified to answer their questions.
it’s easy to focus on the speedbumps and detours, so i’m real grateful to wonderfully positive loved ones like @avilociraptor and @loveisgreaterthanfear who remind me to periodically meditate on the very-real progress i’ve made and use it to fuel faith in future growth. hopefully next spring i’ll be meditating on how this time last year i was still writing more webpages than blogs and had barely performed professionally yet. or maybe i’ll be thinking about how small my 401k was in 2017, or how few countries i’d visited. either way, it’s nice to document and sit in my optimism every once in awhile.
