My Writing Identity-Crisis, Part One

I've been in the middle of a big "writing-identity" crisis since I first signed up to write online because the "person-me" enjoys writing.  The "business-me" takes writing, editing, research (and whatever else) projects in the offline world and completely unrelated to the Internet.  The business-me has from time to time dabbled in writing Internet articles for other people/businesses and for "conventional" pay, but we all know how low that "conventional" pay can be for Internet article writers.  I like my "day-job" work OK, but a) it isn't my dream job, and b) it isn't the kind of money I need in order to live in the area/economic times that I do.  Freelancing has been a second-career type of thing that I turned to when I couldn't find a good enough full-time job in a bad economy.  It made sense because I've always been (I like to think) good at writing and liked  it, and I had a blip on my resume that would include some 1980's writing clips/project if I hadn't left it off.   :/  In any case, I don't have my dream job during the day.  With freelancing, there's often the need to scrape and scrap for the next work and dealing with the whole business that takes place every time some potential new project/contract comes along.  Finding a few "regulars" for whom to work can help cut down on the "un-fun" need to do too much scraping or scrapping.  With a few regulars, however, the price one risks paying can be linked to the "eggs-in-one (or three)-basket(s)" thing,  so having a regular or two can create a false sense of security for any writer who is willing to trust his own business to the business of that one or two regulars.

Scraping and scrapping for new work, on the other hand, can tend to bring an ever-present sense of insecurity that is far from a false one.

 I've spent a lot of time accepting that a lot of people in the world don't have their dream job or business.  I'm well aware of the reality that the world is full of people who don't have their dream job.  It's also full of people who are satisfied to know that any job can be dream job enough when it keeps over a roof over one's head, feeds one's children, and maybe even leaves a little left over for building other incomes and/or saving.

Actually, after years of some of the non-work-related stuff going on in my life, my dream job at this point might actually be "no job".   :lol:

The business-me isn't above cashing in on my ability to put together whatever it is someone else wants me to write in order to make the money I need to live.   Neither is the business-me unwilling to set aside years' worth of hard-earned background in an area completely unrelated to writing, and find ways to make what once mattered on my resume seem to at least remotely relate, and therefore kind of matter, to anyone considering hiring me for their writing-related project(s).  I am, after all a grown-up - and who has that business-me that knows the value of adjusting to changes in economic climates, industry changes, and even personal circumstances.

In truth, it isn't so difficult to be "unwilling to set aside years' worth of hard-earned background" when that hard-earned background has already has some fractures in it as a result of personal choices.  See, that's where the person-me made things that much more complicated for the business-me.  The person part of me has been a woman since - oh, I guess - the 1970's.  Before that, the person part of me was a girl.


Back in the 1970's when I was just starting out as a grown-up I did what so many other young women do, which was to focus on working my way up  the corporate ladder.    Of course, being young and just starting out, I didn't realize how quickly the mid-70's would turn into the late 70's; so before I knew it, I was getting married but also involved in adopting a baby (long story that I won't go into here).   The person-me and the business-me were actually getting along quite well at that time.  (There was a whole set of circumstances that, when combined, meant the whole picture wasn't all that complicated or challenging.  Again, long story that I won't go into here.)  There's no doubt, however, that starting a family did have its impact on that corporate-ladder-climbing that I'd had in mind.  If I think of the "scheme of all corporate-ladder-climbing" in the world, I have to say that I never actually made my way to even the middle of any corporate ladders.  At the time, and considering my age then, being on the low rungs of a ladder didn't feel like a permanent thing. I could see what was ahead and what would be required, as far as any climbing went.  When you're just starting out in the world of being a grown-up, all  you can see is an outline of your own future.  When it comes to how you'll fill in that outline, all you can really do is imagine it.

Well actually, when I said that the person-me and business-me were getting along well, I meant "for awhile".  The thing with ladder rungs is this:  When you start to go from the lowest ones to the next ones up, somewhere along the way people start wantiing you to do things like travel and be happy to stay until "all hours" at the drop of a hat because the company president suddenly wants something like a set of figures that are going to take several hours, and several people's worth of input, to put together.  That's when the rubber really starts to meet the road.  Or, should I say, that's when the sole really meets the ladder rung?  Or, then again, might it be more appropriate for me to say that that's when the SOUL meets the ladder rung?

When it comes down to it, that person-me is actually the whole me.  The business-me is really only a part of me.  When the soul (or the sole) meets the rungs, it turns out the part of a person that gets the best footing can often be that whole person - not just a part of her.

The business-me AND the person-me did what so many other women do when the role of mother is introduced to the picture, and that was to discover the reality that life isn't a simple matter of person-me and business-me once a child comes along.  A whole new set of "me definitions" emerged.  First, there was the "whole me".  That me was divided into the "me as just me", which was further divided into that old person-me and then into the separate business-me.  Another part of my identity was "the mother me", which was in its own category and yet also had been assimilated into "the whole me".  As most mothers will tell you, I'll tell you that the whole identity thing became quite the complicated affair.

I'd later discover that the divisions get even more complicated as each new child comes along.

What we women often learn (at least those of us with all those "me's") is that we need to find a way to make them all co-exist happily.  Why?  Because having all those me's means having a full, whole, life.  Abandoning any of those identities means abandoning, or at least postponing, having that full life.  To one extent or another, and depending on the job and the number of children a woman has, all those identities do fight with each other in any number of minor and major ways.

We've all heard the saying, "You can have it all, but you can't always have it all at the same time."   Well, like so many young people, I believed I could have it all because I knew how "smart" I was at managing myself and my life.  Maybe SOME people couldn't have it all, but that was SOME people (maybe even most people).  It wasn't me.  I was, I thought (as so many young people do) different from all those other people.  I looked around at what I'd accomplished and all the odds I'd overcome, and I looked all the way back from childhood to the then present and saw someone who had always found getting what she wanted, and proving "everyone else" and conventional wisdom wrong, fairly effortless.   I made sure any confidence I had had been based on reality, not just thin air; and I used every little bit and piece of reality for building a foundation of confidence in my own ability to have it all, do it all, and give 120% or more to any number of things at the same time.  Of course, there is no such thing as 120% of anything, and part of that whole picture I mentioned was reduced work hours and a mother who was so close to my son I was convinced that her taking care of him while I worked was as good as my caring for him.

In fact, with the reduced hours giving me time with him, I saw his time with my mother as "something extra", not "something less", in his life.

The minor issues I'd noticed as I'd begun to work my way up were, in fact, fairly minor.  The business-me knew how to deal with such minor issues.  ("After all, I wasn't just capable, hard-working, and business-minded.  I was skilled with dealing with people and situations.")

Life often has a way of teaching young, confident, people that all is not determined by intelligence, skill, performance, willingness to work, and determination.  No, life sometimes has its own agenda for us; and sometimes as that agenda for us is thrown like a monkey wrench into our previously neat and well managed lives, we can both have our previously naive sureness threatened and also find new building blocks for a new, but different, kind of confidence.

Life had its own agenda for me when the time came for me to have our second child.   All seemed to be going according to plan until complications arose with the pregnancy that would otherwise not have posed too much challenge when it came to my work responsibilities, and even forward progress.  When I say, "complications", I really mean "complications".  They were complications that lasted for 20 weeks, and completely separate complications resulted at work, against the backdrop of all that a woman experiences as she fears the baby she's expecting will not survive.  If there's one thing that can let a whole lot of air out of that "confidence balloon" of being young and sure, it's having a life that had seemed to be close to fairy-tale perfection suddenly involve the very un-fairy-tale-like matters of threatened miscarriage and fetal heartbeats that seem ominously and terrifyingly silent.

After having "the fetal remains" removed at 20 weeks, I returned to work the day after I got out of the hospital.  Sad as it all was, I had visions of returning to my pre-miscarriage, almost-perfect, life and moving on in the same direction I've been moving.   I continued working for awhile, and I kept my youthful sureness of my own ability to put things in perspective and certainly not let one bad event affect the rest of my life.  This was the early eighties, though, and there were some slowdowns taking place.  That meant that projects once said to be waiting for approval seemed to remain in a perpetual state of waiting for approval.  I understood the need for belt-tightening, and I under that it wasn't permanent.  Still, in times when things aren't looking good work- and income-wise, it can be difficult to keep feeling sure.  Any sensible person (especially a sensible business person) knows that feeling sure of some things really isn't always the most realistic way to feel.

The miscarriage, as it turned out, had taught me yet one other lesson.  That was that even when we feel confident in our own ability to put the big, bad, things in life in perspective; and even when we rely on our own strength and solid thinking to overcome grief; how much of the "small-stuff crap" we're willing to tolerate changes.  When life is close to a fairy-tale, and when we're feeling "all happy and secure", it's not too difficult to put up with a few setbacks or uncertainties in something like the work setting.  When you're already "not in the mood for any crap" it doesn't take too long before the exit door starts looking like an entrance to a new and better life.

When you're on the lower rungs of a ladder, and all you can see is that outline for what's ahead, there's not much solid above you that appears to anything much to hold onto.  Also, from those lower rungs of a ladder, there's not a lot of risk involved in jumping off.

When I walked through that exit door and found my high-heeled shoes treading carefully on the light blanket of snow that had covered the parking lot, I guess you could say that was when the soul hit the road in a couple of different ways.

Clearly, if I was going to find a way for all those different "identities" of mine to happily co-exist, the terms under which the business-me operated would have to be my own.  I was no longer a 22/23-year-old girl starting life as a grown-up.  I had those high-heeled shoes of mine firmly dug into the challenges and realities of building a family, learning how to process and overcome a kind of grief that I hadn't before run into in my life.

My plan was to do contract work and build up my own business that way.  My plan was also to have that second child I'd thought I'd planned for before.  The plan for the contract work started out OK.  The plan for the second child wasn't going so well.  Back to that lesson about how life sometimes gives us what we don't want:  It also sometimes doesn't give us what we do want.  I don't know if everyone learns this stuff, and when anyone else does.  I was about 28 when I figured it out.

Sometimes, it turns out, life just may not give us what we want when we want it.  I was 29 when my little son was born.  Having that healthy pregnancy took a worrisomely long time to happen, and life (or something) decided that my little son would arrive 6 weeks earlier than he should have.  Having a premie brings with it its own set of experiences, and sometimes those heels I had so firmly dug into reality seemed to sink a little farther down into it than was comfortable.  Then again, I was floating on air.  This was yet another lesson I learned:  We can be solidly and firmly grounded in reality, floating on air, and eve sinking into a little bit of quicksand - all at the same time.  It turned out, I'd discovered, that we (especially, maybe, women and mothers) don't just discover increasing complications as we discover new identities and part of ourselves.   We discover that what we're doing, or how we're feeling, at any given time is no longer about just "me and how I how feel at the moment".  It becomes about "all the parts of me, and all the different ways I feel about any number of different things at any given time".