How to do your life's work when life gets in the way: Boundaries!

And what is your life's work anyway?

When you have a job, you can get time off, but when you feel your job is your life, it's not a job anymore but time off feels im-fucking-possible.

So what do you do? How do you deal with interruptions, sometimes long ones?

So when real life, oh shit it's all real life intervenes: illness (migraines), elections (migraines), other people -- like your spouse or your kid or any other damn family member having problems of some kind and they're around you which is nice and full of love, but they can't see you have to do your life's work until you get into your quiet safe space and shut them out.

So when you have a problem shutting them out, what do you do?

Headphones work. Your own room works. Looking like you're working works. Sounding like you're working, "Not now, thanks, I'll eat breakfast later," works.

If you don't make boundaries, and you're a freelancer, everything looks like free time to outsiders.

What does a boundary look like? Feel like? It feels like freedom.

Freedom. Freedom to tell someone "Go away, I'm working!"

But what if your work looks like daydreaming: you know the important work of wrestling with an idea in your head and heart, pinning it down?
Maybe you're not sitting at your workstation, but you are lost in thought and want no interruptions...
And a beloved member of your household, your tribe, your workgroup, do you have boundary mojo enough to tell them -- even with so much as a glance -- damn it get away from here right now!

I wish I did. And at other times in my life, I could, but now I'm having difficulty reclaiming this boundary mojo.

The Wall of No was a Wall of Busyness: Research the future options for our kid, Study Italian! Visit Italy! And always a drum beating in the background: you're doomed, you're doomed if you don't publish a newsletter this month...

So what happens? No boundaries, no newsletter.

My new mantra: New boundaries, new newsletter.

One of my favorite writers here (and everywhere), Dawn Downey has been publishing short essays twice a week: They come out Wednesday and Friday.

I borrow this thought from Dawn: she has these hard and fast rules about publishing: her deadlines! She says it took time to figure them out.

Rules are boundaries. Boundaries you can set for yourself. Rules you can make for yourself.

And deadlines are the best.

When you are a freelancer -- the world may be your oyster, but the oyster has its boundaries. Do you ignore them and force the oyster to give up their pearl? Sometimes, maybe.

Or do you look at the rest of the world and say, "This looks good over here, and best of all, no shell to pry open."

I'm going with the rest of the world, which is opening up to possibilities. I'm no oyster. Trying not to create a hard-to-reach pearl but something easy for you.

And me.

Happy Sunday! Wishing everyone as much cowbell as you want!