Self Employment Self Reflection

It’s been one year (and some change) since I said goodbye to my day job (teaching at a K-8 school) and hello to self employment. That also meant saying goodbye to alarm clocks, the Monday through Friday grind, a steady (albeit very modest) paycheck, paid time off, and employer-sponsored benefits. It meant saying hello to being my own boss, having way more fun but way less structure, racking up the miles on my lil soobie, and making who-knows-how-much money each month.

It’s been a weird, wild, and wondrous year, so I wanted to take a moment to reflect..

If I could tell my past self one thing, I’d say, “Take the leap already! What are you afraid of?” If you wait until you feel ready / without-a-doubt / perfect, you’ll never do it. Yes, it will feel scary as all hell, but it will also make you feel alive. And, it would be a shame to waste your one and only lifetime feeling anything less than alive. Oh, and… It may not be as scary as you think, after all.

~~~

“What will you do with your one precious life?

A house and two kids, a dog and a wife

Who gets to tell us what’s wrong from what’s right

I know one thing matters, you are here tonight

So don’t walk a path that’s not yours

You only get one, make sure you make the rules

And don’t worry about making it big

Just breathe and breathe out and do something you dig”

-lyrics from my song “Human to Human”

~~~

Now that I am my own boss, I’m always reminding myself to be a good one. We’ve all had bad bosses; who micromanage your day-to-day, who criticize more than compliment, who expect you to work around the clock. A bad boss can ruin a good job, and I don’t want to do that to myself. I have a tendency to be hard on myself; to hold myself to very high, even unattainable expectations; to want everything perfect. But I’m human too, so I’m trying to be kind and gentle with myself. I’m trying to be the boss I’ve always wanted. And I want to work for someone who trusts me, who tells me that I’m doing a damn good job, and who occasionally rips the laptop out of my hands and says “go to the freakin’ river, Blair.”

There are a few big deep lessons that I am still learning, constantly practicing, always forgetting and then remembering again.

The first is; Remember how far you’ve come. It’s so easy to focus on where I want to be and forget how far I’ve come. For years, I dreamt about quitting my day job, about being my own boss, about living on my own, about putting my whole heart and soul into music. And here I am doing it. Yet, I still get caught up in feeling like it’s not (or I’m not) enough. And it’s a fickle little dance we must do between celebrating where we are and how we got here, and simultaneously striving for something bigger; between enjoying the life we have, while building the life that we want. It’s okay to want for more, but not if the grasping gets louder than the gratitude.

And that brings me to the next thing that I always forget to do: Stop comparing yourself to other people! Woof. This is my kryptonite. My achilles heel. A lesson I am not sure I will ever stop learning. It’s especially hard to keep from comparing when we have everyone else’s highlight reel within arms reach at all times.

~~~

“I’m clicking thinking waiting wishing

Watching someone else succeed

I am sitting breathing wanting something

Someone else in someone’s dream

But I’m just buried in my own belief

That I’m not good enough

That we’re not cut from the same cloth

I’m running running running

After a moving train, I can’t catch up

There nothing nothing nothing

I can do without beginner’s luck

But I just need to find myself some peace

Put your cell phone down

Practice what you preach”

-lyrics from my song “Comparison, the Thief”

~~~

Some things that help me combat the not-enoughs include:

~deleting social media for as long as I can muster (even if it’s just a few hours or a few days),

~avoiding the scroll each day until after I’ve made my coffee and done my morning writing,

~focusing on my own creative practice and nobody else's, &

reminding myself that everyone’s timeline is different.

I didn’t know how to play a single chord on the guitar until 2016, so comparing myself to someone who has been playing guitar since they were 8 years old just doesn’t make any sense.

The more friends I make in the music industry, the more I realize that for 99.9% of artists, there is no one point that you get to where you will feel like ‘oh, i’ve made it, i’m good, i’m successful,’ where you don’t sometimes struggle with self doubt / insecurities / imposter syndrome.

So, today I am sitting here in my neighborhood coffeeshop reminding me & you to stop worrying so much! Keep doing what you love to do.

What if it all works out?

And in between all of your hoping-dreaming-thinking-doing-singing-dancing-making-moving, make sure living and loving come first.

It truly means the world to me that you are here. If you are still reading, thank you.

I’d love to hear back from you. Tell me if any of these little big lessons resonate with you. Tell me what lessons you are learning right now. Tell me something.