Tuesday, June 01, 2010

chucking it all

I am covered in yellow (washable) paint. That should teach me to wear a smock when painting murals in my son’s kindergarten class.

I have decided to chuck it all these past couple of months. I’ve been following up on academic concerns about my older son, Iz, which has required taking him to and from testing, going to preliminary and follow-up meetings, and being in his kindergarten class often. (He will be fine. He’s just not skilled at following teacher-directed tasks, remembering names of his classmates or the letters and sounds of the alphabet, or following classroom routines. It’ll come.) And I only have 16 hours a week with no children in the house. So I still have almost-3-year-old Az much of the time. I don’t have a lot of time to work.

I signed on to be the flexible parent. It made sense. I work from a home office, so I can control my own hours. But then my main client went bankrupt (more than a year ago now), and I’ve been editing online content for meager pay. So I had less and less work.

And I am lousy at marketing myself (possibly the worst lack of a skill for a freelancer).

So, with all the recent demands, I’ve done little to no work the last couple of months. Yet I am not independently wealthy, so the financial side worries me a lot. But what can I do? I have mostly let the worry go, or buried it so it can give me an ulcer. I can’t be sure which.