Reconsidering the "I Meant to Do That" Factor
The other day I was seriously down...I mean *seriously* *down*....
And I was feeling that everything I did this year didn't matter at all...because for some reason I felt nobody else wanted to hear about it.
Even if it doesn't matter to anyone else, and nobody else wants to hear it, all that stuff--from speaking to getting paid for writing, to being profield in the Globe--matters a heck of a lot. And I've put it in much better perspective...
One of the biggest difficulties I've had this year, and that the quiet of Christmas has helped me sort out, is the anxiety over lack of sufficient cash flow. It's not that this year's cash flow has been less than the past--in fact, when I put together all the various revenue streams I've had, I've actually made more than when I was working multiple part-time jobs *and* trying to write (rather unsuccessfully.)
The thing is, when you're self-employed, the taxes are higher, and the money you recieve isn't, from the start, your own. Getting paid isn't the same as receiving a paycheck. Mostly because Taxes have to be accounted for, and money for living has to be carefully parsed out. As far as the Fed is concerned, general living expesens--like rent--don't mean a hill of beans. Only business expenses are tax deductible, so lots of things have to be accounted for--or else pay a hefty tax bill.
And then there's been the wrangling with Mass Heath...and the Clinic...and the medical bills...
It's so much easier being someone else's employee, where the burden of taxes and health insurance are taken care of by someone else...
Essentially, I haven't been able to put things in perspective because the money anxiety has made every accomplishment appear somewhat insignificant--when in fact, every accomplishment has been incredibly significant.
Each and every out-of-the-ordinary thing that has happend has been a seriously large accomplishment--even if, at this point, the income is not completely sustainable, it has been achieved through sources that, for me, have been non-ordinary.
In some ways, it's been like living someone else's life. Everything was, for the most part, unexpected.
And that's another thing--the unexpected nature of all of it. I've known some other folks who have planned their business accomplishments so carefully that they've been able to pinpoint exactly when news stories or award nominations or other successes would come their way.
Me? I've been flying by the seat of my pants, tossed around by King Kong, riding around in a funnel cloud and landing in Not-Kansas...
It hasn't been like when I completed my thesis and knew exactly how I got highest honors. It hasn't been like getting that great performance review and getting that holiday bonus.
This time, I felt an awful lot like Pee-Wee Herman flying over the handlebars, landing on my feet and saying, "I meant to do that."
yeah, I meant to do all that stuff...I meant it all to happen the way it did...
I'm such a bad liar.
Back in the Time of Great Illness, there was a pseudo-self-help-philosophy going around that if you had what I had, you must have *thought* your way into that illness with bad thoughts that blocked Positive Energe. Epstein-Barr/Chronic Fatigue was totally misunderstood by the medical establishment at that time, and if you got it, you must've been a Bad Person whose Thinking needed correction.
Didn't matter that most of us who got it were workaholics who didn't take very good nutritional care of ourselves...and had some underlying undocumented complications (allergies, mineral deficiencies, etc.) The medical establishment knows much more about E-B/C-F-S nowadays, and the treatment's much better.
So, because, at that that time, it was all my (mental)fault, I spent a great deal of time getting my head shrunk and going on all sorts of "inner journeys" in a quest to think myself well.
One of those journeys was into the old "search for the self"--I was reminded of it today when I read this entry at Jeff's blog, where he quotes the following from the Grof's The Stormy Search fo the Self(part of my mandatory reading):
I'd been so immersed in the inward hero's journey for so long that I'd forgot that there's an outward hero's journey too--that sometimes after all the inward hero's journeys are over, that some of us might need to venture out of our psyches and manifest those journeys in the real world.
And sometimes those journeys manifest themselves because we just didn't get the memo that it was time to move out of the realm of the psyche. We've re-arranged our psyches over the years and for one reason or another--personal perfection, heath, overcoming crappy parenting--that we have to take the next step and change our lives totaly out of the workaday structure.
and maybe it's a lot to call myself some hero for venturing forth and going into places of wonder (if not supernatural) and having adventures (if not mysterious ones), but, in some way, and even if for my own edification, I can see that my life journey has changed into one that is not quite ordinary because I laid a huge psychic/psychological foundation to make it happen.
If not and extraordinary (that's an ego-loaded word) life journey, at least a different life journey.
It is what it is--and at least it makes some sense now.
And I was feeling that everything I did this year didn't matter at all...because for some reason I felt nobody else wanted to hear about it.
Even if it doesn't matter to anyone else, and nobody else wants to hear it, all that stuff--from speaking to getting paid for writing, to being profield in the Globe--matters a heck of a lot. And I've put it in much better perspective...
One of the biggest difficulties I've had this year, and that the quiet of Christmas has helped me sort out, is the anxiety over lack of sufficient cash flow. It's not that this year's cash flow has been less than the past--in fact, when I put together all the various revenue streams I've had, I've actually made more than when I was working multiple part-time jobs *and* trying to write (rather unsuccessfully.)
The thing is, when you're self-employed, the taxes are higher, and the money you recieve isn't, from the start, your own. Getting paid isn't the same as receiving a paycheck. Mostly because Taxes have to be accounted for, and money for living has to be carefully parsed out. As far as the Fed is concerned, general living expesens--like rent--don't mean a hill of beans. Only business expenses are tax deductible, so lots of things have to be accounted for--or else pay a hefty tax bill.
And then there's been the wrangling with Mass Heath...and the Clinic...and the medical bills...
It's so much easier being someone else's employee, where the burden of taxes and health insurance are taken care of by someone else...
Essentially, I haven't been able to put things in perspective because the money anxiety has made every accomplishment appear somewhat insignificant--when in fact, every accomplishment has been incredibly significant.
Each and every out-of-the-ordinary thing that has happend has been a seriously large accomplishment--even if, at this point, the income is not completely sustainable, it has been achieved through sources that, for me, have been non-ordinary.
In some ways, it's been like living someone else's life. Everything was, for the most part, unexpected.
And that's another thing--the unexpected nature of all of it. I've known some other folks who have planned their business accomplishments so carefully that they've been able to pinpoint exactly when news stories or award nominations or other successes would come their way.
Me? I've been flying by the seat of my pants, tossed around by King Kong, riding around in a funnel cloud and landing in Not-Kansas...
It hasn't been like when I completed my thesis and knew exactly how I got highest honors. It hasn't been like getting that great performance review and getting that holiday bonus.
This time, I felt an awful lot like Pee-Wee Herman flying over the handlebars, landing on my feet and saying, "I meant to do that."
yeah, I meant to do all that stuff...I meant it all to happen the way it did...
I'm such a bad liar.
Back in the Time of Great Illness, there was a pseudo-self-help-philosophy going around that if you had what I had, you must have *thought* your way into that illness with bad thoughts that blocked Positive Energe. Epstein-Barr/Chronic Fatigue was totally misunderstood by the medical establishment at that time, and if you got it, you must've been a Bad Person whose Thinking needed correction.
Didn't matter that most of us who got it were workaholics who didn't take very good nutritional care of ourselves...and had some underlying undocumented complications (allergies, mineral deficiencies, etc.) The medical establishment knows much more about E-B/C-F-S nowadays, and the treatment's much better.
So, because, at that that time, it was all my (mental)fault, I spent a great deal of time getting my head shrunk and going on all sorts of "inner journeys" in a quest to think myself well.
One of those journeys was into the old "search for the self"--I was reminded of it today when I read this entry at Jeff's blog, where he quotes the following from the Grof's The Stormy Search fo the Self(part of my mandatory reading):
In [Joseph]Campbell’s own words, the basic formula for the hero’s journey can be summarized as follows: A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder; fabulous forces are encountered and a decisive victory is won; the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man…
I'd been so immersed in the inward hero's journey for so long that I'd forgot that there's an outward hero's journey too--that sometimes after all the inward hero's journeys are over, that some of us might need to venture out of our psyches and manifest those journeys in the real world.
And sometimes those journeys manifest themselves because we just didn't get the memo that it was time to move out of the realm of the psyche. We've re-arranged our psyches over the years and for one reason or another--personal perfection, heath, overcoming crappy parenting--that we have to take the next step and change our lives totaly out of the workaday structure.
and maybe it's a lot to call myself some hero for venturing forth and going into places of wonder (if not supernatural) and having adventures (if not mysterious ones), but, in some way, and even if for my own edification, I can see that my life journey has changed into one that is not quite ordinary because I laid a huge psychic/psychological foundation to make it happen.
If not and extraordinary (that's an ego-loaded word) life journey, at least a different life journey.
It is what it is--and at least it makes some sense now.
posted by Tish Grier at 10:00 PM
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