Guilty Lessons in Professional Freedom

Although it’s been a full 18 months since I stepped away from a stable salary and went freelance, 2019 has seen my first stint of true remote work – the ability to create however, wherever and whenever I choose – namely braless on the sofa in my ‘blanket office’, for a joyful, wonderful brand that I love and believe in so much. Bliss.

From next week this will be temporarily squeezed into evenings and weekends, just like lots of people who juggle lots of things because bills need to be paid, as I head back to a more ‘conventional’ working life for a few weeks, for a brand I’m also very excited to be hired by. I anticipate the majority of my remote work will likely be completed in coffee shops, likely with a bra on (although tbh not guaranteed).

Remote working has so far been everything I could have dreamed of in terms of creativity and flexibility. It’s also been an interesting period of experimentation around how to structure working for yo’self, and LORDY that’s been a head spinner I just wasn’t prepared for.

The beliefs I – and no doubt many – have built from a young age around work, and what work *should* look like have all come into question. As a child, my dad had a busy job in another town. He left the house early in the morning and got back late at night, with periods of regular international travel. My mum also worked full time while running a chaotic household, providing for and cleaning up after three children with a ridiculous amount of hobbies between them. I honestly don’t know how she did it – the other day she told me she used to do the weekly shop in her lunch break, and it made me want to cry for how tiring and how LONELY this all must have been.

Changing how I approach my work has opened up all sorts of guilt (GUILT!) I didn’t know I had, because I’m judging myself for not having a boss, or sitting down at a desk 9-5, even though that’s not how I’m most productive. Just because I now have the luxury of taking myself off to the gym outside of peak times if I want to doesn’t mean I’m not putting in the hours or the effort, but I have struggled to get my head around this. It’s ultimately a way of working that I have carved into a reality, but it comes with baggage around whether I deserve to get to work in this way – doing work that I believe in, that is fulfilling, but in a way that also prioritises my health and gives me room to breathe. Say what?!

While confronting this, I have found that for me, remote work ultimately equates to FREEDOM, which is such a luxury and something that I couldn’t ever place a value on. It’s one that allows grace for my chronic illness so, so much – which in turn benefits my output because I’m working at my best and I’m working smart. So this feeling of guilt is simply a construct of my own making, and one that’s apparently taking time to shake. Curious, ain’t it?

Over the past six weeks of blankets and mad midnight creativity, I have also uncovered the following:

1. I thought I was a morning person, but I’m one million times more productive in the dead of night once the world has gone to sleep. Damn.
2. I can procrastinate like a champ, and most of this is down to limiting beliefs.
3. Having conversations with those doubts asks me to acknowledge my skills, my experience and to believe in what I know – and that is terrifying, especially when you’re charging others for it.
4. Being granted permission to be creative is such a privilege.
5. Working for great brands and companies you believe in is incomparable.
6. I have not yet figured out a way to productively work AND absorb a podcast at the same time. Anyone cracked this?
7. As such, I have found myself often down a dark hole of trash TV as background noise. I need a second, private Netflix account because it’s getting pretty embarrassing.
8. Daily lists are my saviour.
9. I’ve absolutely been able to make more room for my type 1 diabetes and health in general. This was a large part of leaving a salaried job in the first place, and I’m so pleased the risk has been validated.
10. This has paid off emotionally, physically and creatively and means more than a stable pension ever could (although ask me again when I’m living penniless with my cats at 75).
11. Working in this way has allowed more space in my life for LOVE, in many forms.
12. Although society likes to tell me otherwise, being a single and childless woman in my 30s is also something of a privilege, because my time is my own, and I’m grateful for that as long as it is my truth. 
13. Having a housemate with incurable cancer and by definition long term sick has shown me that sickness, although at times very physical, is a powerful psychological label that you don’t need to adopt if you don’t wish to. She has over and over again rejected the sickness mentality, and shown me that who you are, how you live each day, what you’re defined by, what you think and feel and believe and perceive – they’re all up to you and don’t have to be dictated by the constraints of a diagnosis. She is the greatest teacher of my life and a daily reminder that among many other things, being able to work is a privilege in itself.