Bill, my husband who hails from broadcasting, tells me those news people on TV are only exhibiting one hour of a day's work. They've been gathering and scurrying around for news all day before they do their evening commentary.
Being an adult, community, and theatre teacher automatically put me in the camp of freelancer.
I nearly guffawed, but held my hand over my mouth and snorted through my nose, when an office girl at one of my teaching sites asked me if I found myself taking work home. That was where my work was...mainly.
I guess this hit home, even today, when I received an email stating our stories should be chosen and the approximate time given, in a couple of days. It wasn't too hard to work from bed pouring over stories, but this timing bit meant I had to make sure I'd chosen the right one for performance five months from now, paraphrased it, and timed it in front of the mirror while checking the clock. On top of that I'd have to get up and look through my files to find the ones I'd considered unearthing and recycling just to make sure I hadn't overlooked a few oldies but goodies.
Well, at least, I was no longer secretary of the group, a position I'd held for a couple of years.
It's not being lazy, but a virus kind of brings you down.
And that's just what I need to address.
Sick days, as a freelancer, are not sick days. During summer school, if you had to stay home, the papers were still there to correct. If you set up a sub for a sick day, you'd get the lesson plan ready for the sub, and in my case, (at least, in evening adult ed) not get paid for the prep. Of course, you'd be delighted if the sub actually followed your plan, as I did as a sub, and left things neat, instead of in disarray.
Retirement, I read somewhere, is refirement. *
Reinventing one's self tends to draw you back into other forms of... freelancing.
Writing and storytelling require preparation, and of course, you have the added bonus of finding yourself teaching according to these skills. So, I'll be in my basement taking puppets and props off the wall and stands and gathering them into daily boxes.
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And that's just the tip of the iceberg. |
