Get to Work, Woman!

And that is what I have been telling myself for weeks now. Every day for weeks I have been waking up in the morning or afternoon or middle of the night, whichever time my wonky sleeping schedule of that particular moment warranted, enjoyed some coffee and sat at my computer with WordPress and Photoshop open and for weeks I have gotten nothing done. I never realized a day could go by so fast while sitting in front of the computer racking my brain for inspiration, but here I am, way past the point of ‘don’t force creativity to come spilling out onto the computer, just wait it out and it will strike when you least expect it.’ It did not strike and I am well past the waiting period to just let it come oozing out of me; I need it now, dammit!

I was hired to design and develop a website for a woman I have admired for years, Angela Shelton. She gave me the motivation to begin my healing process and it is because of her that I am a relatively sane and functional woman. I have been fortunate beyond words due to the fact that I speak to the woman whom I believe played an integral role in saving my life on a relatively regular basis; and while I am far more fortunate than many others out there who would love to speak with their mentors, to be hired by them is quite another feeling.

After we first began talking online and I told her what I did for a living, she hired me to design and develop a website for her online cooking show, Stirring Up Trouble, which I did, and because she liked the work I did so much, she then hired me to revamp her current online web presence, AngelaShelton.com. This, of course, has been an opportunity of monumental proportions for me. The design planned for the website is nothing short of my limitations, but because I have gained so much in my life from this person, every time I sit down to work on the design of this website, I freeze. This experience has sent me through emotional hurdles; waves of inferiority and teeny tiny little waves of determination. I have been working on websites for over eight years; I have always had a website of some sort to work on and a friend of mine told me, when I told him about this gig, that I have been training for years for a gig that means this much to me and he was right.

Working for someone who you admire is hard. It challenges you to make sure that you bring everything inside of you, especially creatively, outside and make sure that you are representing yourself as a designer to the best of your ability. It gives you the chance to give back to someone who has helped you more than you could possibly put into words and while it isn’t an easy task, I’m willing to bet it will be amazingly rewarding. That is, once I force the creativity out of me and onto the screen in front of me and until then, I’ll just have to keep working on it because that’s all you can do.

Personal Reminder: Schedule Days Off

If I wasn’t aware of it before, I definitely am now; as it turns out, I am a major workaholic.

I have been working from home as a freelance website designer, developer and web content writer for over two years now. The reason I began working from home is because I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which affects how often I leave the house, how many people I can stand to be around at one time and even my ability (or inability, I should say,) to drive a car. So due to this “condition,” I wasn’t physically able to get myself to leave the house every day and so I quit the job I had because I knew I was going to end up getting fired anyway, and began working from home. Because I couldn’t change the fact that I have a disorder that affects my life greatly, I made changes to my lifestyle that suited my particular needs. While I don’t have the financial stability a regular 9 to 5 job secures, I no longer wake up every morning thinking ‘Oh no, I have to leave the house. I don’t want to. I don’t want to get out of bed. I can’t do this.’ and that alone is a remarkable feeling for me and eliminates a lot of pressure I used to put on myself when trying to function like a “normal” person because I had to accept that I was dealing with something that I could not change.

Before I was aware that my PTSD was affecting my life to such a degree where I physically could not bring myself to leave the house, I was told by a myriad of different people in my life that I had to be lazy; that there was obviously something wrong with me in the respect that I didn’t want to go to work and just didn’t. Now I know that wasn’t the case. Looking back, I was kicked out of high school during my senior year for absenteeism. I lost the last two jobs I had due to the fact that I couldn’t leave the house to actually go to those jobs five days a week. After a while, it started to add up and I began to realize what the problem actually was.

Within these past two years or so, I have learned not to rely so heavily on what other people in your life think about you or about something you do. Obviously I have had this problem for quite some time; I was supposed to graduate from high school in 2005 and now, almost four years later, I still have the same problem, but because I know what the problem is and made the necessary changes in my life, I have such a better understanding of it all and I know that the times where I didn’t go to school or I didn’t go to work was not because I am in any way lazy; not even close.

Because I work from home, I never get to actually leave work; it’s always here, if I’m on my computer I have it in my head that I could and should be doing work and for most people, being a freelancer means setting professional business hours, but for me, it means that if I am on the computer, I should be working. This is not good! Throughout my life I have always been a night owl and I have very sporadic sleeping patterns that do not coincide very nicely with the whole ‘professional business hours’ thing and while I have tried implementing that frame of mind in my life, it never has worked out very well. During the past few months, however, I have realized that I need to make some changes to the way I work. Because I’m a freelancer, I don’t know when I am going to have work and every year, there are a few months of the year that go by in an absolute dry spell; no work to be found at all and because I have been through those times, I have a very hard time saying no to work because who knows when I’m going to get another gig. For the past few months, I have been working pretty much non-stop and whenever one overworks themselves only one thing can happen–Burnout.

I have a knack for burning out at the worst times ever. Right before a big project is due, in the middle of a busy week where I have so much to do for many different clients and I will find myself sitting here, playing video games, reading blogs, wasting time on Plurk and Twitter and so on. So obviously, something must change–and soon. To rectify this situation, I am going to start taking two days a week off, just like a normal job, but not in the respect that I set standard days for myself. If I need to take a break and take the day off, I am going to. It is important not to deny ourselves what our brains are trying to tell us. Just like you don’t ignore your body when it screams at you to eat, we cannot ignore our minds when we need to lay low for the day or take the day and do something that we enjoy doing and that is exactly what I plan to do!

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