Monday, October 10, 2011

Stop the Insanity! A(nother) Post About Work-Life Balance

Last Thursday night I applied for a job in my field.  The job was listed as "contract," so it wasn't clear if it was freelance from home or working in-office.

Friday morning, a representative from the staffing company called me about the job, which turned out to be an in-office gig.  It was a phone interview of sorts.  It turns out the staffing company was working on behalf of a company I recently (phone) interviewed with for a different position, and to which I had made all kinds of requests about working from home or freelancing, and which subsequently sent me a rejection letter. 

I went through the same set of annoying prima donna requests with Friday's phone interview.  This sort of diva-ish attitude doesn't come naturally to me, and I always end up qualifying it with, I totally understand if you want somebody to come into the office, or I want to be a team player and come in whenever necessary.  Because, you know, both of those statements are true.  I absolutely understand why a company that doesn't know you from anyone wouldn't want to give you all kinds of special privileges right off the bat, especially if they can hire somebody else who's willing to meet the demands of the job. 

But, at the moment I feel a little bit stuck.  I want to work either part-time or full-time-but-part-time-from-home, and those gigs are nearly impossible to score with a company you don't have any history with. 

But I just don't know if I could do the full-time, Monday through Friday, nine to five, in-office job with a long commute each way.  I did it before and it honestly kind of broke me.  That work arrangement means that my time with Nathan will be limited to the hectic hours of dinner-bath-bedtime in the evenings, and that the weekends will be devoted to laundry, chores, and errands. 

Don't get me wrong, I like working and I'm willing to work hard, and for many hours.  It's just that I can't handle a situation that's inflexible, the kind of thing where every little thing that comes up is a crisis. 

Therefore, I've been scouring the Internet for random gigs I can do freelance, part-time, or from-home.  I've come across about a million of these sites that promise that you can earn money in your spare time writing blog posts or content for random sites, working piecemeal and getting 5 cents a word or $20 a post or whatever.  (These sites are often referred to as content farms.)  And look, I have no doubt that somebody, somewhere, has made money off these sites.  It's just that the applications for these gigs are often needlessly complicated, requiring you to submit writing samples, and I don't really want to waste a bunch of time crafting these samples if nothing ever comes of the job.  (And, again, I'm not saying I wouldn't spend time writing something if the right job opportunity came along.  I'm just saying that I'm not willing to knock myself out for a job that pays half a cent per word, if it pays at all, when I could use that time to apply for a more meaningful job or to clean my house or something.) 

Then there are the gigs that don't pay you in money, but promise to drive traffic to your blog.  Thanks, but I can't pay my electric bill with "traffic to my blog."  Not to mention the traffic generated by these outside writing gigs is minimal.  And also, I am not interested in hustling to make a few pennies each month off my blog, thank you very much, Google Adsense.  Nor am I interested in making $5 for every 1,000 views, but only after I get 10,000 views per month for 3 months, Chicago Now.  And don't get me started on Examiner.com. 

Similarly, I love the whole freelance thing, or at least I love the whole idea of freelance, but I'm not established enough to have any steady gigs.

Bottom line, and this is where this post's title comes from, I'm tired of scrambling.  I've always been the kind of person who feels more comfortable with a steady day job.  I'm not scrappy enough to go out and hustle and make my money off freelance writing or running my own business.  So, what I'm asking is, is it time for me to give in and look for a full-time job? 

No comments: