Pyjamanating

Hi, this is my first post on this blog so I thought I’d introduce myself. I’m Linda and I’m not employed by anyone and that’s OK – I think! Maybe…. (feel like I’m at an AA meeting!)

I’d been looking for a ‘real’ job for months now, whilst all the time saying that I wanted to work from home for myself someday. Well, if someday, why not today? It’s a bit scary and I do feel a slight panic but it’s exciting too. I’m going to blog here about my journey and the changes I have to make to move from this being a dream to reality. I hope people will follow along and perhaps together we can make this interesting transition.

I made a start yesterday by brainstorming all the things I can do to earn money without being in a job. Today I took the first section of the brainstorm and made a list of actions I can take to move each one of those ideas on. I’ve put them on a to do list on pbwiki and set myself some SMART targets to get them done. As the first section was Blogging getting started on this blog is one of those actions and I can cross it off now

Well, I have to admit yesterday was hard going for various reasons. The online application went in before the deadline, a little brief perhaps, but better than missing out. I am reminded that the human resources people have seriously broken the whole process of recruitment. CVs are not accepted and the trend these days is to require a whole bunch of evidence which matches the candidate against a person specification. The only trouble is that the person spec is drawn up by a committee of stakeholders, who each have to add their own slant into the proceedings in order to exert their influence. The result is a long list of essential skills and experience, across a broad range of fields, in depth and with proven knowledge of both the discipline and the sector. In other words they end up insisting on looking for somebody who is already doing the same kind of job for the same type of organisation, who is capable of being all things to all people. Then they offer a short term contract on the lowest terms and conditions in the market. Anybody who is a suitable applicant on their terms wouldn’t dream of applying, and anybody who does apply is inherently unsuitable for the job as described, and thus likely to be filling in the application with a whole load of answers which bear little or no resemblence to the truth.

Enough of that for a while.

Today I need to get started on designing a course outline for some part time adult education in the local boroughs. It needn’t be too detailed, in fact it needs to be quite adaptable so I’ll use a wiki for the draft and invite my partner to collaborate. This will be creative and fun!

If it doesn’t rain all day like yesterday I’ll spend some time in the garden too.

Ironically one of my first tasks in the role as an independent freelancer is to apply for a position which, if I took it, would effectively put me back as an employee again. But only for a few months. If I get to interview, I will explore the possibilities of making it a part time contract for a start. Then there’s the opportunity to build up experience and contacts which this particular position offers. Filling in job application helps to focus on current skills and experience, keeping the CV up to date and thinking about opportunities. It’s also a task which I will tend to avoid if possible, so getting this done today is a good way of telling myself that I am at work and not on holiday!

Goodbye to the humdrum, adieu to wage slavery. No more command and control freakery.

From now on you can deal by yourself with the results of your own uninformed, unilateral decision making. I’m outta there!

The countdown ends tomorrow, without me having made too much of a fuss about it. The occasion will go unmarked and largely unnoticed until September. Just one more payslip.

I won’t miss the journeying, the hustling crowds, nor many of the people.� I may miss the new air conditioning system if the weather continues to return to what it should be.

Yesterday was busy. In one area I hope to have secured some paid work for at least 5 days a month homeworking, and I applied to a neighbouring borough to teach a couple of short courses. These are likely to be just 2 hours a week each, probably at weekends or evenings. Another one I was hoping to land has yielded nothing but silence so far.

On the whole I’m feeling quite pleased with the way my ‘portfolio career’ might be shaping up. Of course it’s very insecure, and there will be times when I despair but at the moment I’ve never been more sure that this is the right time to cast myself fully adrift into the freelance world.

P minus Four and counting…

Yesterday my journey to work was abandoned. I travelled all the way to� an interconnecting Underground station� before being informed that the service was suspended for the rest of the day. So I hummed and haahhd for a little while, jumped on and off another train then decided to give up and go home.

Then I had to negotiate a refund of the automatic penalty fare taken off my Oyster card credit for having an “uncompleted Journey” !!

I won’t miss being a commuter one little bit!

From Loompanics Unlimited

The Job Culture isn’t just jobs, work, and business institutions. It’s a comprehensive way of life in which millions of people place institutional paid employment at the center of their world.

�What do you do?� is immediately understood to mean, �What kind of paid employment do you have?�

In the Job Culture, family life, recreation, deep personal interests, and desires all must be structured around and subordinated to The Job.

Even things like how we eat (fast foods), how we spend our leisure time (TV, shopping) and how we save for a rainy day (investing in stocks and bonds) are dictated by a culture of job holding and corporate institutions.

Our conversations, our holidays, our dress, our choice of neighborhood, choice of vehicle, health-care options, and a thousand other things are all dictated by one central force: The Holy Job.

This is normal? No, this is whacko. This is not the way human beings evolved to live.

I applied for a part time, home-based content editing job today. It’s on a topic which I’m passionate about, has a lot of relevence to this pyjamanating project, and requires skills that are right up my street. So this could suit me down to the ground.

There’s just one tiny little snaggette….

But hopefully the potential employer will be broad minded enough to see it as an opportunity to take the site beyond any perceived restrictions. There could be some interesting business to be made between us.

21/7/07 is now the official date on which I begin working from home. It seems to have come around very quickly, but couldn�t be a day too soon.

This phase is going to be a bit like being thrown in at the deep end, without any really firm engagments or safety net but it�s also kind of transitional, in that I�ll be applying for some kinds of work that would still be based in physical locations in and around London, UK. Just as long as they are either (1) helping me to survive and (2) moving me in the right direction.

Oh yes, and everything I do towards the goals is going to be recorded, diarised and published though the use of 43things and the Pyjamanating blog

See more progress on: work from home