Self-Employment | Bethany Bassett

Tag: Self-Employment

Finally Free[lance]

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 6 Comments

The thing about a season of wild change is that every new morning feels truly new. It’s like we’re starring in a coming-of-age movie about our own life (with a moving indie soundtrack hand-picked by Zach Braff, of course), and absolutely anything could happen just around the next scene change.

One of my school-mom friends told me the other day about her brother taking an incredible high-paying corporate job in the States ten years ago. He and his pregnant wife uprooted their lives here and moved to the US… just in time for September 11^th. The corporation who hired him went under in the aftermath, and he and his wife suddenly found themselves income-less in a foreign country. (Oh how sinkingly familiar this sounds.) Instead of just snatching the first menial job he could find to get back on his feet, though, my friend’s brother took advantage of the upheaval and enrolled in a photography program with a small stipend. One decade later, he is doing what he truly loves instead of dashing to endless meetings in a company car. He and his wife are still living out their dream of raising their children in the States, and they’re doing well enough to spend summers vacationing in Italy.

Our situation is much nearer the beginning of that story than the end, but I couldn’t help nodding enthusiastically because we’re already seeing how unemployment is the best thing that could have happened to my husband. He is already set up as a freelancer and doing support work in a field that makes his brain light up with ideas, and he’s turning some of those ideas into the start-up he’s been dreaming of for years. Finances are a day-to-day tango right now, but there is always just enough, and it’s becoming ever easier to leave tomorrow in the future where it belongs.

Our coming-of-age movie probably looks like a surf documentary put on by the Jackass crew—our family clinging to a tidal wave of uncertainty for all we’re worth and hurtling toward anywhere—but I can personally confirm that it feels like liberation.

(Photo from the beach in Porto this summer.
More coming soon to a blog near you.)

6Sep

Alasment Period

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

This is it—the Adjustment Period. I didn’t expect the choppy swaying to hit quite so soon after I announced we were cutting our financial mooring lines, but we’re riding full on the swells now and stumbling our way to sea legs. It’s fantastic having my husband working from home and so, so good to see him energized rather than deflated by work, but I’ve gotta admit, being the one to leave in the mornings with the car keys and a briefcase is… strange.

Our days have an unfamiliar cadence to them now. We’re using new vocabulary and penciling appointments into uncharted waters, and while I’m utterly grateful for the possibilities ahead, I’m also utterly discombobulated. No matter how good all of this change is, it’s still change, and I’m responding with my best impression of a hungover sailor. It’s quite attractive, I’m sure.

Even though the rational side of my brain assures me that an Adjustment Period is necessary and that it’s only natural to feel like I’ve drunk a captain-sized stash of moldy rum at any given time, my emotional side is wallowing in alas… as in, Alas, I’ll never find my groove! and Alas, I shall never write anything meaningful ever again! Like I said, attractive.

So here’s my counterstrike to all the “Alas”es sloshing around my unsteady feet—
5 sources of home-front happiness this week:

Having my dearly bearded husband back from a business trip
The accompanying backrubs
Tag-teaming on everything from dirty dishes to dirty kids
Rearranging rooms and letting clutter go without regret
Enjoying these last few days with the girls before school starts

Your turn!

1Sep

I Was Born Not Ready

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 4 Comments

I was going to start with It’s Thursday; how did this happen? when I realized that the last official month of summer had slipped out of my open window during the night, ergo…

It’s September; how did this happen?

Last week was a long blur, some moments punched into sharp focus by worry or hope over our shapeshifting future and others stretched timelessly over evenings at the table with friends. This week, Dan is off bringing possibilities into the present tense, my worry has officially lost out to hope, and I should be floating now that the weight of so much unknown is out of my arms. In reality though, I’m simply feeling heavy, fingers numb.

Though it seems incongruous with the adventurous streak that trotted me to this corner of the globe in the first place, I always have difficulty adjusting to new circumstances, so this lull… okay, funk is probably just the natural result of my perspective playing musical chairs. Combined with my introvert personality and social opportunities overlapping without recharge time, it’s made for a bewildering week so far. The space-time continuum is dragging against my feet like gravity, and despite a light work load, I’m plumb worn out.

That justifies singlemouthedly demolishing half a pan of Rice Krispie Treats, yes?

I’m not ready for it to be Thursday, and I’m certainly not ready for it to be September. I’m not ready for the early work morning tomorrow or for the day trip on Saturday or for church on Sunday. (I think my reluctance over that one is especially justified considering last Sunday when I, unwillingly presiding over the piano, butchered a hymn request. In my defense, the song was an unforgivable 9/8 time signature with meter and tempo changes halfway through, but I was clearly spattered with gore by the end. This may also be a contributing factor to the dearth of Rice Krispie Treats around here.) I’m so very not ready for the deluge of personal expectations waiting for me once the girls start school the following week, and it’s all compounded by the list of things I planned to do ahead of time. (I know summer break looks long and carefree at the start, but seriously—what form of substance abuse inspired me to promise the other moms I’d plan a group picnic???)

(Probably this kind.)

All this to say sorry for mybusily-out-of-sorts radio silence, and please, if you have any idea how it got to be September, let me know so I can bribe it back into hiding until I’m properly ready.

23Aug

Unknown v. 2.0

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 9 Comments

August 3^rd slipped by this year without a hint of fanfare (unless you count a dirty house as a celebratory tradition); it was a normal Wednesday in a normal workweek in a normal summer, and it completely slipped my mind that this normal was once the sheer unknown gaping underneath.

Four years ago, we packed our lives into a motley assortment of boxes and tracked a thing with feathers across the Atlantic. Through miracle and determination, Dan had found a job here that fit his abilities perfectly, and the opportunity to finally, finally take on our dream was marvel and terror at once. Some nights, we danced in a buzz of ideas, lit from the inside out with the champagne-glow of adventure. Other nights, we lay creased in thought, my hand resting on the precious variable in my womb as the whens and hows circled like vultures overhead.

There was no gingerly edging off the beaten path, no feeling out each new step from the safety of solid ground, no road signs assuring prosperity in 4,500 miles. All we had was the blank expanse of possibility and the faith to leap, spurred on by knowing our options boiled down to courage or regret. We took the leap, and on August 3^rd, 2007, we landed on Italian soil to begin forging our new normal. In the four years since, we’ve settled into the comfort of friendships and routine, language becoming ever less of a barrier and the Italian culture sinking ever deeper into our bones. It’s more than we could have hoped for when we boarded the jet back in Philadelphia…

…which makes this new drop-off all the more dizzying.

Dan has turned in his job resignation. It was necessary for a variety of reasons, and it was time, but oh. We’re here again with the buzzing ideas and circling questions, minus one occupied womb and plus one meticulously written business plan, and while there are possibilities that make our heads spin with goodness, they’re still only possibilities. Our now-normal has a windblown pang to it. I keep taking mental inventory against my better judgment and trying to work out which facets of our life—home? church? friends? money?—will still be in place come Christmas. My heart balks as the calendar pulls us forward.

Never mind that we wouldn’t be here in the first place without that leap off the edge of reason; I don’t want to do it again. I don’t want that momentary weightlessness above the dark pit of my imaginings. I don’t want to have to rely so completely on a divine intention I still have difficulty trusting (and sometimes believing at all). I just want someone who can peek into the future and put a stamp of guarantee on our steps before we plunge into them. I would like the risk eliminated altogether, thankyouverymuch.

But if I’m honest with myself, it’s only the narrowest bit of my mind that’s clinging to the notion of safety. The broader scope of who I am recognizes that ours, like any good story in the making, runs on the cogs of adventure. These tenuous days swinging between doubt and hope are paragraph spaces in an unfolding work of art that teaches us to live as protagonists rather than as background filler, and the process is nothing short of exhilarating.

It seems clear that August 3^rd has served its time as a memorial to our story and is now ready to pass on the honor to a new date, a new landing—whenever and however it may be.

3Jun

Ring-Around-the-Insanity

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

Less than two weeks until our Stateside vacation, and the detail-hoarding squirrel in my left hemisphere is thisclose to frantic. We Bassetts have a noble traveling tradition of insanity, and those mad dashes across foreign cities take a lot of preplanning. Schedules to be calculated. Maps to be downloaded. Accommodations to be arranged. Insurance to be finagled. Suitcases to be precision-packed (I let my Tetris champion husband take care of that one). And must not forget the passports, wedding gifts, swim diapers, teething medicine, SIM cards, kitchen sinks, and brain cell refills.

I also have a hairy editing project to finish, so date night this week consisted of Dan and I side-by-side on our computers, eyes glazing over, forgetting all about supper. Chick flick material, I know. Add an upcoming move and potty training (why, God, why?) to the mix, and you have the kind of busyness that thunks around in the pit of my stomach at 3 a.m. Priorities keep playing ring-around-the-rosie in that way they do when I’m no longer seeing straight.

So, in the interest of preserving senses of adventure everywhere, please share: What was the craziest travel experience that you (or someone you know) survived?

7May

Résumé

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 8 Comments

don’t

jobs.

For instance, the one in which I entered names and addresses from handwritten cards into a computer for eight loooooooooong hours every day. I bribed myself to keep on living with Mrs. Baird’s cupcakes and one Sunkist a day from the vending machine. Still less fun than it sounds.

…Or the next summer, at the same company, in which I weeded out duplicates from the universe’s longest list of churches. In French. Which I don’t speak. It took me the entire summer.

…Or the summer after that with a company that hired me without actually having a position for me. I occasionally made copies, chatted with the secretaries, and tore sticky notes into miniscule bits to give myself some job security. Oh, and I also avoided their mandatory company-wide “spiritual strengths” meetings, which sounded as pleasant to me as steel wool underwear, by hiding under my desk. (I kept a pile of paper clips on the floor to give me an excuse were I ever caught. I wasn’t.)

…Or my first job out of college—pregnant and newly moved to Unemployment City, U.S.A. I searched high and low for English-nerdy jobs, particularly ones that I could do at home with the baby, but I ended up settling for a part-time position at a dusty resale store in an abandoned shopping center. (I still kick myself for not at least applying to Starbucks. Why? Why? Why? Why? Oh right, placenta brain.) I stocked dusty shelves, reorganized dusty knick-knacks, and coughed over the dusty cash register while dealing with unreasonable customers. I also dusted. And then quit.

…Or the next job I got as a church custodian since it allowed me to bring newborn Natalie along. She slept in the nursery cribs while I scrubbed bathrooms and vacuumed between pews, then I’d read novels from their library while she nursed. It wasn’t such a bad setup (besides leaving me exhausted and grumpy at the end of every day), but I couldn’t deal with my bosses. I would single-handedly clean up debris from a giant church dinner, steam clean the carpets, scrub the urinals, wash the windows… and one of the elders would complain that I had left some dust on the underside of a table in the attic. Perhaps I have a problem with authority figures (make that probably), but (okay, definitely) my days as a “sexton” were over.

…Or the last teaching job I took in the States. I was hired to teach several different courses to students ranging from kindergarten to college in both one-on-one and classroom settings. And now I need a nap. I loved the teaching experience itself (Have you ever played Study Skills Jeopardy with 7^th graders? Or taught anything to first graders? They were a blast!). However, the company I worked for required me to make my own curriculum for each of the different classes from scratch. I also had to drive myself across town to different schools throughout the day, and I consistently put 60 unpaid hours a week into the job. In addition, I kept getting called to the principal’s office for:

1) Wearing the wrong kind of jacket.

2) Taking too long to drive from one school to another across town during rush hour.

3) Failing to adequately prepare my English student for his math test.

4) Not allowing a student to do unrelated homework in my class. (After a parent complained… “But my little girl is just so busy! She doesn’t have time to be paying attention in class!”)

5) Breaking the ice with an international student by telling him I would be moving to Italy the following year.

6) Failing to come prepared to a tutoring session. (I brought colorful worksheets I had written and printed up myself, my own books, two packs of markers, a homemade memory game, and a timer. But I made the mistake of asking my student if she had a favorite pen she wanted to use. Her parent called in irate that I had come “unprepared,” and my boss refused to hear my side of the story.)

That last one was the kicker. Irrational parents are one of the most insidious forces in all of nature, and I simply could not deal with them without support from my employer. I was stressed from my peeling toenail polish to my split-ends. Ironically, we were also losing money due to my work-related expenses—gasoline, daycare, vodka by the truckload. I called it quits after one eternally long semester.

Only two of the fifteen jobs I’ve held over the years met my needs for both creative outlet and a boss who didn’t make me cry. However, something tells me that I am unlikely to find a career as a university student worker. (It’s too bad; planning freshmen orientation was fun AND involved free food!) So where does that leave me now?

☑ Large, sticky psychological issues with authority figures

☑ Unsatisfied with my [quite lengthy] résumé

☑ But absolutely no desire to re-enter the workplace

☑ But wishing I could earn some money all the same

☑ Dreaming of the day I can write at home in my pajamas as a professional writer rather than just an errant blogger with a snarly job history.

Amen.

29Oct

Fairytale Medication

Posted by: Bethany in Uncategorized 3 Comments

I brought my computer along to the hospital last week, thinking that as Sophie whiled away the hours in dreamland, I would whip out a novel or something. Oh, refreshing naivety. Sophie did much more crying than sleeping, and when I found myself with a spare hour Friday morning, I had the following number of brain cells with which to write my novel: -2. I opted for mindless busy work instead and got to reorganizing my e-mail.

The significance of this completely boring story is that I ran across an e-mail from four months ago that I had never seen before. I suppose my old hard drive destroyed it in a fit of petulance, and oh. Deep breaths. You see, this e-mail was an out-of-the-blue offer for my dreamiest of dream jobs from a company I adore. It was fairytale material, folks; not only did the glass slipper fit, it came with a side of work-from-home and compliments aplenty. After I scraped myself off the hospital ceiling, I wrote back to tell them yes, I love you, yes.

And then I discovered that the person offering me the job is no longer employed by the company. I have since tried to make other contacts, but no luck; this little story seems to have reached The End. I am self-medicating with logic—after all, I was plenty happy before I knew about the offer—but sheer disappointment is still clinging to my week.

I keep hoping that there’s some cosmic purpose in my not finding the e-mail until too late. The two times I was turned away from grad school brought this same heartsick confusion… until pregnancy and then an impending move to Italy gave gentle reassurance that I was already where I needed to be. Both times, Something Better was just around the corner. It’s hard to believe that Something Better than my dream job is in store for the coming months, but experience has taught me that trust is far better medicine than logic is, and perhaps—just perhaps—my fairy godmother is still waiting to make her grand entrance.

Page 3 of 4«1 234 »