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Joyfully Jobless: One Path to Balance
by Marcy BrownTwice, I started writing this article with some boring variation of "How I achieve work-life balance." Then, last week, the stars must have lined up wrong. I had to deal with unexpected layoffs at work, plan my son's 7th birthday party, and climb daily into a vehicle that was suddenly making ticking time bomb noises. What was my nice, balanced response to this sudden chaos in my life? Let's just say that the empty cake box you'll find in my trash this week isn't empty because we had 28 uninvited guests show up at the birthday party.
Is this really balance? Do I have the right to suggest that I have any answers?
Compromise: the mark of a grown up
The precarious balance I have in my life is the result of ongoing compromise and negotiation – with me, with my spouse, and with my colleagues. Some compromises have been painless; others have been heart-wrenching. On my best days, I love being a librarian and I am thrilled with my work. But, those are also usually the days when my mommy-guilt rears up and keeps me from feeling like a success. Every now and then, my son and I (who are both quite moody and often butt heads) have so much fun together that I can't imagine a better day. But then, after he's asleep and I'm staring at a full e-mail inbox, I'm convinced that I'll never really have the energy to build the career I want. I tell my spouse that my entire life is a compromise; he counters with the assertion that "compromise is what being a grownup is all about."
For me, the key to this uneasy balance was making the choice not to work a single full-time job after the birth of my son. I say "single" job because the combination of various part-time, contract, and freelance work that makes up my career sometimes does require a 40-hour week. But, I also have the occasional 20-hour week, and when and where I do my work is often up to me. This allows me the freedom and flexibility to be more involved than many working moms.
The kid conundrum
Work-life balance is elusive even for those of us without children. Once children enter the picture, though, the search for balance seems to intensify. In early 2000, I was very pregnant, unemployed (having just finished a year-long library contract assignment), and pretty darn miserable. I knew that I wanted to return to work at some point after the birth of my son, but not full-time or for at least six months. I wanted to be able to make money, breastfeed my son on demand, and remain professionally active. Some frantic phone calls to friends resulted in the recommendation that I pick up a copy of Barbara Winter's bestselling book, Making a Living Without a Job, which I did almost immediately.
Multiple profit centers
Making a Living Without a Job encourages readers to become "joyfully jobless" by developing Multiple Profit Centers as a way to more easily deal with the natural ebbs and flows of self employment. An individual can have two, three, or fifty Profit Centers, which might be interrelated, but just as easily might have nothing to do with each other. Specific combinations of Profit Centers depend upon your individual interests. Operating multiple enterprises and activities makes it more likely that you will have some form of stable income; during slow periods in one enterprise, another may pick up.
Happily employed as a librarian since graduating from library school in 1993, I've also flourished during stints as a freelance book indexer, a records manager, and a paralegal (though I do tend to "forget" four painful months as an internal auditor). I knew that I wanted to focus my joblessness on information-related activities, but beyond that I wasn't sure how to proceed. I first tried to grow my indexing business, but found that unreasonable and shifting book production schedules made it almost impossible to schedule anything with my infant son. I also did some online research on a freelance basis for former employers, but discovered that, while I was a very good searcher, I wasn't necessarily an exceptional or a fast one.
Eventually I found a job in a hospital library for 20 hours a week. While it didn't offer much room for growth, it did allow me to build subject knowledge in a new field. And, it was a part-time professional position, something almost unheard of in my region. I had a great deal of schedule flexibility, an employer to pay my professional association dues, and a livable hourly rate. My hospital library job became my first Profit Center – and one I held for over six years, until quite recently.
It really is who you know
As my confidence grew, I became more involved in local and national committees of the Medical Library Association. I cannot overemphasize the importance of a network of personal and professional contacts when developing your Profit Centers. My network led to my next two business lines: teaching graduate information literacy as an online adjunct for a major distance university, and performing medical indexing and taxonomy work for a medical content producer. Along the way I discovered an interest in instructional design and curriculum development, so recently added course development work and writing learning management system reviews to my Profit Centers.
The balancing beam
I still have days where I feel like I've tricked everyone into thinking I have the perfect balance: I get my son on and off the school bus every day, yet have work that keeps me intellectually engaged. I'm not getting rich, but make enough to afford a monthly night out so that my husband and I can continue to grow in our relationship. I can't go to every conference I want to attend, but generally make it to one big one every year.
But, if you come away from this article with one thing, let it be this: there is no perfect balance. I have days when I am so overwhelmed that I end up sitting on the floor of my home office flipping through fitness magazines for three hours while eating chocolate croissants. I also have days when the clients don't call and I spend 30 minutes crying over coffee because I'm convinced I’m all washed up. I'm chronically sleep deprived, because the only time I have to exercise is at 5:30 AM. In the end, we want to feel that we’re doing important work, but we want to stay sane doing it. Only you can determine whether your personal compromises have led you there.
Marcy Brown does business as Envision Research, specializing in expert medical searching and instructional design and development. She was formerly a medical librarian with The Western Pennsylvania Hospital.