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Gen X Strikes Back, Here Hold My Zima — I’m Going Back to Work
I just went back to work, and I’ve never felt so valuable.
I was 14 years old when I punched my first time card. (Yes, in 1988 — we actually physically stamped a piece of paper to log our hours worked. Ah, the satisfying ka-chunk of the time clock!)
When I graduated high school early in January of 1993, I was working three jobs — at a grocery store, a retail clothing store, and the local newspaper office. Shortly after graduating, I enrolled in a community college, started my first full-time job, and worked as a part-time graphic designer in the evenings when I wasn’t in class.
I have been a bartender, a server, a retail worker, and a mutual teller at a horse track. Hell, I was even once a “coyote” dancing on the bar and lighting drinks on fire in the early 2000s.
(I might have even yelled, “Pour some sugar on me!” while doing so.)
I spent most of my adult life chasing the next opportunity, climbing the corporate ladder, and shattering glass ceilings. For twenty-seven years, forty to sixty hours a week went to major corporations, part-time gigs, and side hustles.
But by 2015, I’d had enough.
“There’s got to be another way to make a living,” I thought.
The Truth in Freelancing
I was right. There are a million and one ways to make a living, and freelancing is one of them.
For the last seven years, I have made freelancing my full-time job. I’ve worked from home, on my own schedule, and with no one to answer to but myself and the clients who pay me.
I have made money as a freelancer, an Airbnb host, a disc golf course owner, and for baking cinnamon rolls. I’m making a residual income from older articles and affiliate programs. I’ve written for dozens of publications, hundreds of companies, and myself.
But don’t believe for a second that a single minute of it was easy.
