Goldilocks

A little busy is good. A little bored is good, too. Too much of either is unbearable.

Like most people I know, I am either too busy or too bored. My life, therefore, is unbearable.

It’s unbearably busy when I have lots of little work projects. That happens in this fashion: I have corporate clients who need my skills as a writer. I write things like training modules – online courses that take fifteen minutes to read, with a quiz that takes five minutes to complete. Of course, each of these little courses takes something like 20 hours to create. When I have multiple little courses to create over a month or so, it gets hectic.

It’s hectic in part because I have to do this work on top of all the usual things people have to do. Laundry. Dusting. Vacuuming. Shopping. Hygienic activities. Exercise. Replacing batteries. Recycling. Cooking. Tidying. Opening mail. Talking on the phone. Socializing.

Yes, yes, I know, I know – everybody has to do that shit. Yet, somehow, a freelancer’s life seems different and more difficult than a 9-to-5’ers life. Those 9-to-5 folks know they have to go to work. They can’t do the laundry while they are working. They have clear divisions of time and space: work-time and work-space exist in much different places than home-time and home-space.

Me, I can do the laundry, or socialize, or walk around naked during work-time, at my work-space, because it is the same damn thing as my home-time and home-space. It’s weird, even after sixteen years, to be able to do that.

Oh, yeah, also – boredom. My boredom is probably the same as your boredom. Except, well, when I get bored with work, I can’t exactly think, “Hey, I should quit my job, go freelance, and pursue my screenwriting career.”

So my boredom sucks worse than yours, just like my busy-ness sucks worse than yours. Assuming, that is, that you’re a 9-to-5’er.

What was Goldilocks’s job, anyway? Was she too bored or too busy? I can’t remember.