Jane/Susannah/Sadie here, wondering where the summer has gone…
Financial advisors often tell us to be sure to rebalance our investment portfolios at least once a year, or whenever we have a major life change, to make sure we keep an appropriate mix of investments for whatever our life goals are.
Right now, I’m in a similar kind of rebalancing act.
I was laid off from my corporate job three years ago, and I’ve been freelancing since then. Anybody who’s ever been self-employed or has freelanced knows that it’s incredibly, well, freeing to be in charge of one’s own work destiny. But it takes discipline, both of the mental and financial varieties, to be successful. With no boss but yourself looking over your shoulder, and steady paychecks a thing of the past, you’ve really got to bring it.
And I’ve loved bringing it.
But during this time, I’ve also been open to new opportunities. I applied for quite a few jobs, but got surprisingly few interviews. A few months ago, I put in yet another application for a job I found through an online job matching service. I’d more or less forgotten about it when, lo and behold, I got an interview. And then another. And then was asked to do some job-specific testing and to travel out-of-state for an interview.
Bottom line is, I’m going back to work full-time, at a job in the book business that I’m incredibly excited about, right after Labor Day. The same day I officially become an empty nester when my only child starts college in the city. And almost exactly three years to the day after I left my corporate job.
So where does this leave my writing? Well, darlings, to paraphrase Rick Astley, never gonna give that up! But now that I’ll be on someone else’s schedule again, I’ll need to rebalance my days. Writing, exercising, housecleaning and cooking (I fantasize there will be less of that with my son gone!)–all these things got done, and probably more efficiently, when I worked before. So I’m not worried. And I am, as I think I mentioned, very, very excited about my new situation.
As summer comes to an end (and yes, you scientific types, I know summer doesn’t actually end astronomically until September something), do you rebalance? Any tips for me for getting it all done again?