I do a lot of work, these days. I work much more now than I did when I had an in-house editing job, because my life no longer includes that delicious phenomenon known as paid downtime. A little over a month into the adventure, the verdict is that becoming a full-time independent contractor has been good for me, in a great many ways. If I’m able to acquire enough projects to fill my plate (which so far I have), I make a little more than I used to, in terms of gross pay. This is a bit misleading because I have to put tremendously greater amounts towards health care and taxes now, and I don’t get paid vacations. But if I can push my work week a bit further, and I think I can, I’m pretty sure my overall financial situation will actually improve slightly, given time. (Which is good, because hey! Ross’s has sure deteriorated. Heh.) And as I said to Michael last night, I feel extremely invested in what I do, because the fruits of my labor feel very direct. They warm me, in the form of the new sweater I let myself buy the other day. I can taste them in the chocolate croissant I occasionally reward myself with. For what may be the first time in my life, I feel like I truly understand something about the very nature of work. And I like that.

The worst thing about my job (besides always having to look for work, and not getting paid for weeks after I do it) is the fact that I think about money a lot more. A lot. Which, among other things, makes me a really boring conversationalist. I’m constantly making calculations about income and expenditure in my head, and wanting to explain to Ross, in detail, the new discoveries I’ve made about self-employment tax law.

The best thing about it is that I am totally in charge of my time (unless I have a horrible deadline to meet). Because I can arrange my work time however I want, I can take off in the middle of the week and go to a museum, as I did last Wednesday, or spend my lunchtime sitting in the sun eating a sandwich I just made and drinking tea I just brewed with my own kettle. I can go to the gym first thing in the morning and not have to worry about being late to the office. I can pick up the phone when Ben calls in the middle of the afternoon and talk to him, instead of feeling like the person in the next cubicle over is going to listen in on my personal call. And though I am busy, it is an entirely different kind of busy than having a schedule that involves getting on a train and facing a crowded commute twice a day, so that every weekday evening automatically starts out tired. Remind me of these things, dear ones, when I complain (as I surely will) about my decision. I know it was a good one.

I play a bit, too. Sometimes I can even persuade Ross to join me, although he’s rather absorbed in the demanding and exciting process of learning new things and doing homework (I’m leaving it up to him to properly describe the graduate school experience, because I figure if I tell you all about how he is he’ll never start blogging again like he says he wants to). On Sunday, for instance, I took the train uptown to this and it was fabulous! I also read more than I have in many years; I’ll never return to the glory days of my childhood and adolescence, when I zipped through four or five books a week, but I end many days now with a book in bed, and that feels good, too. Many things about this new life feel right, and healthy. I’m still working on the friendship thing, but for now there’s enough sweetness here to satisfy me.

And then there is the planning I do, still, every day—plans for the new kind of career I want to have, plans for the things I want to make, and see, and do. Many things about this new life suggest the possibility of change, but it’s hard to make everything—or even one thing—happen when it takes so much energy just to notice things, to keep on top of things, to take care of things.

But as Stephanie says, by way of Rilke,

I beg you…to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given you now, because you would not be able to live them. and the point is to live everything. live the questions now. perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without ever noticing it, live your way into the answer…