saving ink

Yes, you read that correctly. I’m writing an entire blog post on the ancient Chinese game of Mahjong, or at least the digitalized, solitaire version of it. I first played this game as a teenager, probably in middle school or maybe the first year of high school, when a Chinese-American friend taught it to a bunch of us and we would play for hours on her dining room table. Right away it reminded me of Rummikub, which was unknown to most Americans but familiar to me, as I had played it in Germany with my uncle as a little kid.

Nostalgia aside, I had forgotten about Mahjong for over a decade when I found and downloaded a free solitaire version of the game for my laptop. Then I found a free phone version as well, and it quickly became my go-to procrastination tool during longer periods of work. But unlike taking Facebook breaks or catching up on my Reeder feed, Mahjong breaks felt refreshing, not draining, and after a game or two I was actually ready to get back to work.

Anyway, why is any of this important enough to write about (and what does it have to do with writing, for that matter)? By playing Mahjong only during prolonged stretches of work, I managed to condition myself to work longer. By allowing Mahjong to be my only acceptable form of rest, somehow the temptation to procrastinate in other ways was significantly reduced (though not completely eliminated yet, I am only an ADD-prone human).

Playing Mahjong is also an excellent gauge of current brain functioning for me, which is an important thing to be aware of when intoxication and sleep depravation are regular occupational hazards. If I can’t complete a game in a timely manner, if the tiles are starting to blend together, I know it’s either time for sleep or more coffee. It’s a fail-safe; if I can’t put two Chinese characters together, I have no business writing anything.

My point is, over the last year I’ve learned to develop these systems that allow me to work in spite of myself, even at times when I’d much rather be out riding bikes or occupying a bar stool or even watching cheesy TV shows. Mahjong breaks are part of the system. Another trick is listening to the Battlestar Galacta soundtracks while working - something about Bear McCreary’s gorgeous classical battle compositions puts my mind in a place where it needs to create, be productive, fight battles (“Prelude to War”, anyone?), aspire to greater heights, even if it’s just translating magazine copy or writing website articles.

I wish I could say that my job is always exactly what I want to be doing, that work always feels like play, but that’s bullshit. I love my lifestyle, and there are days when I love my work, but more often there are days when it feels like work and no amount of sugarcoating will make it otherwise. Deadlines leave no room for mood swings or deliriousness. So I put these systems in place so I can work through the work until there’s less of it and more of the type of work that I do love. And even then, I have no illusions that that work will always come easily, but if I can manage to ingrain these little mind tricks, even those days won’t be as hard anymore. At least, so I hope.

In the freelance writing biz in the U.S., there are two ways to get paid: by the word and by the hour, with the first being more common in my experience so far. The rates vary from the abysmal (half a cent/word) to the half-decent, but there’s something that has always struck me as wrong about getting paid by the word.

For some reason, in Poland (and probably other parts of Europe) the pay is per character instead. Perhaps that’s a bit more fair, as it’s hard to imagine the word “convoluted” costing the same as the word “the”. But it’s still a system that emphasizes quantity, not quality, which runs counter to every piece of advice seasoned writers have given: cut, cut, cut. Hack off every piece of unnecessary flesh down to the very bones of the thought.

Pay per hour is great for journalism, when the bulk of your time is spent on research or interviews. But if you want to charge for any creative writing, pay per hour is an absurd concept. Do you put the time in the shower when that idea hit you on the invoice? Do games of Words with Friends in between bouts of writing count too? How does one bill for creative procrastination? And once again, quantity of time doesn’t translate to quality of writing.

Granted, there’s quite a quality gap between Tolstoy and SEO copywriting; maybe a quality Mariana Trench is more accurate. But as a firm believer of doing everything to the best of your ability, whether it’s washing dishes or writing a paid blog post, I tend to dislike systems set up to encourage laziness, because despite my current pontificating my natural tendency is towards the easy road, and taking the hard way is, well, harder when the game is rigged against it.

So our systems of compensation are vastly inadequate, but they exist because writers need to eat (and drink) too, and quality alone is too subjective to remunerate. Maybe in the future machines will recognize quality by a mathematical formula and pay in accordance. Though at that point, those machines would probably be doing the writing anyway.

All that aside, I still find myself rubbing my eyes in disbelief at the fact that other people pay me any sum of money for the words that come trickling out of my fingers. What a world.

I can unequivocally say that 2011 was the most formidable and fulfilling year of my adult life. It was my first full year of just freelancing, which means it was the first year that I have been wholly in charge of my financial situation. It was also the first year I have kept a detailed budget since I had my first job at 16. It was the year I paid off my credit cards in full. It was the year I didn’t leave Central Europe all summer, and still had a blast. It was the year I stepped foot on the African continent for the first time (and did it cheap as hell). Most importantly, it was the year I broke even, despite working the least and having the most fun of my adult life.

But forget my words, let’s look at the numbers, because graphs are fun!

Here’s a breakdown of my total expenses for 2011, by category:

Fun fact: I spent 1/3 of my food budget on booze. Yay? The basics such as rent, electricity, and food ate up the biggest chunk of my budget, but paying off those credit cards (i.e. the sins of the past) really took a toll. 2012 goal: keep that number under 5%. Oh, and then there’s that pesky student loan…

Now that we’ve got money out, here’s money in:

As you can see, proofreading and translations paid the bills. Considering my savings took a hit, it’s no surprise I barely earned any interest. Other is generally selling stuff, band money (very rare), photography gigs (even more rare) or gifts from family, while writing only earned me a measly 6% of my income. My goal for 2012: 50% income from writing.

Perhaps the hardest part of freelancing was the month-to-month disparities in income. Feast or famine, as they say:

(Net income + savings - net expenses)

All in all, I scraped by. I earned exactly PLN 188.39 (about $50) more than I spent in 2011, and managed to end up with just under PLN 800 (about $230) more in my savings account than I started 2011 with.

The Important Part

Victory? Technically, yes. Really though, this was just a(n educational) start to the freelance lifestyle, and this year I need to earn a whole lot more, spend a bit less (especially on booze, ouch) to make this thing sustainable. There is some hope, though, because here’s another telling figure:

Pages translated or proofread in 2011: 1085.18
Estimated hours worked* in 2011: 813.89
Hours worked in a normal 9-5, 40hrs/wk job (assuming 50 weeks): 2,000

What this means: while the average joe was slaving away in a lightless office for 2,000 hours of 2011, I spent about half of that actually working, while the rest was spent reading, working on my websites, reading more, playing music, biking, enjoying the summer, going to festivals, traveling, and in general feeling better about life. That also means I can still work a bit more this year, earn a better income, while still having more free time than if I were traditionally employed.

Just to bring it all home, this was me working in November, on a sunny beach in Barcelona, sipping cappuccinos and enjoying the 19 degree t-shirt temperatures:

What this untimely means: the “free” in “freelancing” makes it absolutely worth it.

*This was my best guess, judging that it takes an average of 15-30 minutes for me to proofread one page and 40-60 minutes to translate one page, based on the breakdown of translation and proofreading pages… let’s just say there was some complicated math involved, but my best guess is that I spent between 800-1,100 hours working in 2011, whereas the average person would have spent 2,000.

One thing I hadn’t really noticed since I’ve been freelance is my usually ever-present wanderlust. When I was working regularly, I would constantly dream of travel. Some of my most epic trips took place in the last few years - the Trans-siberian/China/Australia trip, Iceland on my birthday, several Scandinavian adventures. This summer I stayed relatively close to home. I only left Poland for a few days, and only to neighboring countries - the Czech Republic, Germany, and Ukraine (though that last one was a first and quite an adventure). 

Part of it is because I’ve been watching the excellent Long Way Round and Long Way Down series on the recommendation of a friend. Part of it is that my 29th birthday is approaching, adding some urgency to my goal of stepping on all of the continents except Antarctica by the time I’m 30. Either way, I have two very massive undertakings in the next year - Africa and South America - and I really need to get started on the planning stages.

So this is partly my asking for advice, particularly when it comes to Africa. That’s probably the first trip I’ll take, and the one that requires the most planning and security considerations. Oh, and I have to do all of this dirt cheap, on account of my constant near-poverty, which is probably another reason why I haven’t travelled much since going freelance - though hopefully with another writing gig or two that will change. It would be great to spend time working in Africa to at least pay for the travel there, so that’s something I’ll definitely look into. Oh, and going by boat would be awesome. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much all the thought I’ve put into this so far.

Help?

It’s amazing how much the weather has an influence on me. I never really felt this in Texas. Sure, I bitched that it was hot, but it was ALWAYS hot, and for months and months that didn’t change. And anyway, I was always in an artificial climate - no matter what was happening outdoors, my day was an invariable 72 degrees and I was completely indifferent to the blazing heat or torrential downpours that were a norm. It takes a hurricane for people to notice the weather there, and only because they might be forced out of their air-conditioned homes and possibly spend some time in slightly less air-conditioned motels.

But here, weather matters. Especially now, when my days are often quite literally determined by what’s happening outside my window. Oh, it’s a sunny, beautiful summer day? Screw work, I’m going to bike 25 km because who knows when it’ll be this nice again. It’s above 30 you say? Well, that only happens a couple of times each year, so I’m definitely going swimming. It’s pouring and cold? Guess I need to leave 10 minutes earlier to catch the tram instead of taking my bike (yeah, I’m a pussy like that).

And layering - it’s really an art form. I can say I never really appreciated the amount of strategy a good layered outfit requires when I lived in a place with two fashion choices: t-shirt or t-shirt and light jacket. Here, depending on the occasion, I can go with as few as two or as many as four or five layers - and that’s just the top, there’s also the tights or long johns underneath the jeans when it gets really cold. So, a wintertime Friday night outfit can consist of a base layer of light dress over tights or a fancy t-shirt or tank top, layered with a sweater or hoodie, layered with a thick sweater if necessary, layered with a winter coat. Oh, and gloves and hat and the ubiquitous scarf (best if it can double as a hood) and perhaps another sweater in the purse, just in case. Even most summer days require light jackets or sweaters in reserve for the evenings.

But enough about fashion. What got me on the topic of weather in the first place was yet another realization of just how much influence the weather has on my mood. I feel powerless whenever I realize how little control I have over this effect, as if having control were the natural state of affairs, rather than the guise we all throw on to mask our impuissance. Heat, cold, rain, sleet - it means nothing! We mighty humans have conquered weather, have beaten Mother Nature at her own game. Watch us as we build our air-conditioned mansions and irrigate the deserts. What does it matter that it’s grey and dreary outside when I’m in my well-lit, heated office building?

It does matter, though. Being closer to the weather, having it directly affect your day also results in it gaining a direct ability in affecting your mood. In short - when it rains, I get less done. I’m sleepy and useless and have to force any semblance of productivity. And then the next day I’ve had even less sleep as I spent the previous day force feeding caffeine in order to work, but it doesn’t matter because the sun is out and I’m up and working out and working and the caffeine actually works too and isn’t it a beautiful day to be alive. And the difference is a few clouds releasing water molecules and lowering the temperature by an insignificant couple of degrees.

So maybe it is a kind of devolution - not exactly a return to nature, but at least a greater awareness of it. But it doesn’t feel like I’ve lost any kind of battle, because it seems like an awful waste of energy to be fighting this war in the first place. We evolved on a planet with seasons in most places, and despite our constant battle to ignore those changes in temperature and precipitation, as long as we’re not freezing to death or dying of heatstroke maybe it’s better to be affected by our surroundings, even if it means riding bikes instead of spending days in an office, or lying in bed watching TV instead of marking tasks off a never-ending to do list. Luckily, those are luxuries I can afford as a freelancer, but I still wonder if the rest of the Western world would be better off living like this as well.

12:21 am last night. That’s when it came, that moment. It comes more or less weekly, sometimes more, sometimes less, but always when you’re alone. No television, no spouse, no distractions in your headphones. The bed is the best place - that, or the shower. But it’s always when you have just let your guard down, whether scrubbing routinely or just about to drift away.

That moment, when just for a split second, you know you’re not going to make it.

It takes different forms for different people, most more mundane. A housewife knows they’ll run out of money. A father sees his children taken away. A soldier sees the bullet that will sail straight for him. And I see failure and mediocrity, of being not a late bloomer like I always thought, but a non-bloomer.

Just for that moment, you know, know it’s not worth it, that every effort you make is a waste. But then it’s over, and reason takes over, and you see the road ahead with your dreams fulfilled, or at least a damn good effort made towards them. And luckily, this feeling lasts longer.