October is my birthday month, and I can’t believe how long it’s been since I’ve blogged on here. I supposed it’s because I’ve been so busy charading as an adult these days, and you know, working. 

I just turned 38, and decided I’d rather be 11. When my friend’s daughter who shares a birthday week told me she’d be 11 and asked how old I’d be, I said I was going to be 11 too! She didn’t believe me, but I told her it was better than being the age I was going to be, and to hang on to being a kid as long as she can! Seriously. This real world stuff can be exhausting!

It’s been raining every Saturday, which means my birthday bonfire still hasn’t happened. I’m wrapping up a few client projects which overlaps with some new client projects getting ready to start, and overall working from 10AM til 2AM isn’t all that unusual. And then there are days like today where I work from 10AM – 12PM and then run errands for 3 hours. Then I come home and work for a few more hours, and then go out and take care of my horses. Then I come back inside again and sit down and do a few reports, have a glass of wine, and call it a day. It makes me stop and realize just how much I can accomplish, and just how hard it must be being a real adult in the real REAL world.

My “corporate” pyramid

You see, I work for myself so that means I can make my own hours as long as I meet deadlines and goals for my clients. I work with a team of freelancers which means if we want to make more money or be more profitable, we work smarter, not harder. It also means that I can run errands in the middle of the day, take a morning off to fox hunt, or cram a 50+ hour work week into 3-4 days and have perpetual 3+ day weekends. Forever. Not bad, eh?

Realizing all of this, I realize just how much the real REAL world, as I’m calling it, totally, completely, fucking sucks. You’re encouraged to work harder, not smarter. At least that’s how it was when I was in the normal working world. If I got done 10 hours of work in 6 hours, I didn’t get to go home 2 hours early. Nope, I had to work more. If I worked late a few nights, I didn’t automatically get the day off after, or a half day Friday just because I worked so hard. Nope. I had to report to the office, work through client meetings, and sometimes even just have busy work to keep well…busy. Because that’s what the American workforce (at least the typical work-for-someone-else-in-a-white-collar-job) does. It just is. And it FUCKING sucks. I highly recommend against it.

Yeah, so then there’s me. And while I did legitimately log some 16h Monday, 9 or so on Tuesday, and then another 8 today, that means I’m already at 33h for the week. Tomorrow I’ll get about 3h of work done and then friday probably another 8h or so, still easily putting me over 40h for the week. Not too shabby. 

If I had to fit all that into a 9-5 work schedule, with a commute, scheduled lunches, and well, all the other corporate bullshit, I’d probably lose my mind. Okay, so maybe charading as an adult isn’t such a bad thing after all…at least the way it’s going for me. Rock on!

“Traditional” corporate pyramid LOL