freelance

It happened on a Friday morning.

I stood on the roof of the parking garage with my box of belongings, and less one employee ID card. My eyes scanned the building for my office window as if to confirm that it too had vanished.

I didn't feel bitter. Not yet, at least. I even remember a surprised feeling of appreciation for the brutalist architecture I had loathed just the day before.

I did not want to cry. I did not want to laugh. I didn't want to fling the tie from my neck and belt out a “Go fuck yourselves!” Any urge for cathartic release simply wasn't there.

I just wanted to crawl into a hole and stay there forever.

Here’s the part of the story when I tell you that being fired was the “best thing to ever happen to me”! Let me be clear — No the fuck it wasn’t. I was devastated.

Sure, I started my own business that I still have today. Most years, that business even pays my bills. But I'm not so big on finding purpose in pain. Sometimes, everything is just the worst, Kenneth, as Liz Lemon would say.

I made the best of a shitty situation. Freelance was always in me. I would've found it sans-pink slip.

My messy relationship with freelance

Freelance doesn't grant me carte blanche for all aspects of my life, but it bought me some time when I desperately needed to figure out who I was. For that I'm grateful.

It has since allowed me to work on my own terms. For that I am luckily.

I have ADHD and hypersensitivity. Both have been a fairly destructive force in my life. Particularly in a corporate office setting and especially while undiagnosed for so long.

(Finishing this soon — From Jason)