I’m step­ping in between the reg­u­larly sched­uled reader ques­tions posts to talk a lit­tle bit about a post that I wrote at a low point at the begin­ning of the month.  I try not to let my per­sonal emo­tional life affect things on the blog, but I was really strug­gling, so I turned to my blog for cathar­sis.  Project Awesome is still in effect, and so far, it has really had an impact.  Let me quote from my first post,    The Life and Times of Jeremiah Tolbert.

Struggling  isn’t depress­ing. I am tread­ing water, unable to move for­ward or back.  I can’t move from the place that I am in, in my life, until I have some path to a future.  There are a lot of paths but I am con­strained on which ones I can accept.  Right now, the only path I can accept is one that gives me enough income to sup­port Sarah and I while she returns to school full time for 1–2 years.  After that, she can get a teach­ing job and quite pos­si­bly I can actu­ally ded­i­cate myself to the pur­suits that I love.

(Note:  the real issue wasn’t income, it’s health insurance)

The notion that my path is con­strained was an arti­fact of my emo­tional state.  When you’re down, you start to feel like your options are lim­ited.  Project Awesome, and fak­ing opti­mism, has had a pro­found effect on my life so far.   While I haven’t had much suc­cess on the job front, I have picked up or am in the process of pick­ing up sev­eral free­lance jobs.  I feel bet­ter about myself in gen­eral. I  wake up in the morn­ing and I look for­ward to the day ahead of me.  I feel more con­nected with peo­ple, and while I still suf­fer from attacks of fear and anx­i­ety about the future, I have the sense now that I can do so much more than I have.  Possibilities have opened up that I couldn’t see before.

You make your own path.  Your paths aren’t just options pre­sented to you, from which you pas­sively choose.    I’m push­ing for­ward with my free­lanc­ing career, tak­ing on excit­ing new work, even though I know that ulti­mately, I need a dif­fer­ent sit­u­a­tion.  But the truth of the sit­u­a­tion is that I need health insur­ance and pre­scrip­tion ben­e­fits.  It don’t need a job–but at first glance, a job seems like the only way to get it.

Yesterday, I did some Googling and dis­cov­ered that there are some ways that free­lancers can get insur­ance.  I’m not sure if we will be turned down for them like we were rejected for pri­vate health insur­ance plans last sum­mer, but I’m will­ing to ask around and inves­ti­gate my options.  There are asso­ci­a­tions through which I can try to get a plan, and I’m going to check with the local cham­ber of commerce.

The les­son I’ve learned is that when some­thing seems impos­si­ble, it just means I haven’t googled the right search terms.  I can find my way around the bar­ri­ers that seem to block my path to fol­low­ing my bliss.    Creative problem-solving goes a long way.   Having opti­mism seems to be an impor­tant step in lever­ag­ing that cre­ative problem-solving skillset.  You have to believe, despite evi­dence to the con­trary, that your prob­lems are sur­mount­able.  Starting from that posi­tion makes a world of difference.

Thank you to every­one for your sup­port.  It’s helped put me on the right path, and some of you have been watch­ing me care­fully to help make course cor­rec­tions if it sounds like I’m drift­ing off track. For that, I can’t thank you enough.  You are true friends.

Tagged as: freelancing, personal, project awesome