Tag: 5 year plan

Freelance Reflections #15

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It’s been over a year since I wrote a freelance reflection, and my 3 year anniversary of being self-employed passed by just recently. Although the current pandemic impacted my work, and meant I had to sadly cancel planned and potential tour dates for my book ‘Circles’, published by Burning Eye Books at the end of 2019, I am now back to my usual work.

I spend mainly my mornings content writing, and my afternoons tutoring. There’s not as much time for creativity as I would like, but I love being freelance and I’ve now moved out of my parental home for the third (and hopefully final) time, living with a friend in South East London. I’d moved to SW around the age of 4/5, so prior to that I had lived around Herne Hill and Norwood, so I feel very at home now, more than I did before.

Part of why I love being freelance is being able to create balance in my life, in a way that isn’t always possible being employed (though it should be, and I think this pandemic has shown how flexible the workplace can truly be). I wake up between 7:30-8am, and after listening to a guided meditation in bed, I’ve started doing my Spanish apps for 15 minutes whilst having breakfast. I digest my food whilst writing my journal, then do some exercise. This has been at home (dancing, hula hooping, skipping, lifting dumbbells, and Nike Training) or outside (jogging, skateboarding, rollerblading), but I’m thinking of joining a gym. After 2-3 hours of content writing, I have lunch and then I have some time for other activities like submitting poems, and studying Spanish. I come home from tutoring between 6:30-7:30pm, depending on the day.

After making my feedback notes, I have dinner and try to spend the evening doing less work-focussed activities. I’ll mess around on my phone, probably a bit too much, watch some sort of programme, and then ideally have some time to do some varied activity, which could include listening to a podcast or music, drawing or colouring in, playing games, chatting, or writing. I also love baths, which I like to have before watching a programme, so this free hour sometimes (often) goes out the window, and then ideally I would read for an hour. I do tend to self-sabotage in the evenings, rebelling against my own structure of the day, and some evenings I’ll go out and do none of these things I plan, but I know when I do follow the structure roughly, it can be really fulfilling.

During the last few months, I’ve been doing some Instagram shows, including with She Grrrowls, my own channel and a couple of other online shows, including Spork, which can be listened to on Spotify, and The Word Bin, where I just talk about why I would bin the word “needy”. I was also commissioned to write a poem about small acts of rebellion during the current pandemic and lockdown, as part of the Royal Museums Greenwich’s Museum From Home series.

I had the urge to look back at my last 5 year plan from 2017 and made a new one. I find it interesting how overly-ambitious I have been, and I’m not sure if I’ve done the same with this new one, but it’s funny to think I had put ‘think about children’ in 2021, and now in 2020, I’ve changed this to ‘freeze eggs’, which I really hope I can do through the donor scheme as I have donated eggs three times now, so this would be my last chance. I’ve included career goals alongside personal goals like this, and imagining I may be able to save for a deposit on a place by the age of 36, and think about children around that time too. I have no idea what situation I’ll be in then, and though it’s a nice idea that I may have a partner to do these things with, in 2017 I had also hoped to move in with my then-partner, and I’m much happier now living with a friend, so there’s no saying that any of these things will make me happy, which really is the most important goal of all.

“She used to run a night.”

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When I lived in London I was working full-time, commuting about 3 hours a day, and on top of that I would, like clockwork, do something to do with my creative practise. Increasingly, this felt like I was doing more and more admin (such as things to do with running my night, She Grrrowls) and less actual writing.

Some people may think that since I’ve quit my job and moved to Spain to teach English, that I’m no longer pursuing these creative endeavours. Hell, they may have thought it before, since I was working full-time before, and just changed location. The difference is, I guess, at least I was connected to the world of poetry before; in Córdoba this just won’t be the same, and any poetry is likely to be in Spanish.

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However, as Paula Varjack explores in her show, ‘Show Me The Money’, a lot of writers have other means of income. Even if they’re not honest about it. There are many different ways to be a writer and a performer. That said, I’m not planning to stop any of what I’ve been doing. I took a teach and travel break, and now I’m making a change.

Moving to Spain is not something I would have thought about doing seriously until my partner planted the idea of living abroad. I had always wanted to learn Spanish, and it seemed to be a good way to do it. So, after exploring South East Asia, I came here. I also thought that a change of scenery would also be good for my mental health, as well as encouraging me to be more independent.

I couldn’t believe it had been five years since I had been to university, which means five years of living with my parents. That’s why, when I heard the expression “perpetual adolescence”, I thought ‘that’s me!’ At the age of twenty-seven I am now living completely on my own. I’ve already set an oven glove on fire, and cut myself with both a knife, and a pair of scissors.

So, this year I am shifting my priorities. I have decided I want to make a real effort to learn Spanish; that’s my number one priority. However, I have a theory that this focus might help me write more, as it will be what I do with my spare time, for fun. Even my Netflix-time will be a form of studying, and being in South East Asia, I still wrote a lot – both blogs, articles for The Norwich Radical, and poetry.

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I’ve been in my new apartment for just over a week at the time of writing, and without WiFi (which may also be an influence) I have prepared lots of blog posts, written some poetry and completed one short story. I’ve been enjoying it a lot, and I’ve been more in tune with when I need to take breaks.

One of my problems is that I also set myself too many goals. This is why I’m trying to focus on learning Spanish as a focus. I see writing as something that will naturally happen, and beyond trying to schedule some time to do it, it’s not something I need to stress out about. However, I do want to keep some other things ticking along. I still want to write journalism, and I still want to keep She Grrrowls going, albeit in a different form.

I’m planning to start up an online zine, where I will feature poems in print, and hopefully videos, and essays, rants, pictures and so on. This way, I can hopefully keep people in the loop about re-launching the event on my return to the UK. I’m also thinking of taking the event to Edinburgh Fringe Festival, inspired by going the previous year, as well as fellow Kid Glove member, Joel Auterson, taking his and Jake Wildhall’s night ‘Boomerang Club’ there this year.

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I do have a show I want to write (and the idea was Highly Commended by Ideas Tap when I got to the interview stage for the £30,000 fund). But I’m not going to rush the process, especially as I found out from Jack Rooke (another inspiration, with his show ‘Good Grief’) that Soho Theatre have opened up their writing project up to 30-year-olds, and obviously I will be 28 by the time I’m back!

So, the point I’m trying to make, is that I’m not going anywhere (to those people who put thumbs down on my YouTube videos). Obviously, something I need to work on is the fact that I still care what people think…

Anyway, so the plan is to be able to write poems in Spanish… then back to London, where funnily enough, my partner may be moving after all these years of long-distance. Let’s hope he likes it and wants to stay. I will then have enough experience to get some income from teaching English as a foreign language, and run some workshops. I want to apply for funding for She Grrrowls, which I would have to do in June in order to make a swift return after the Fringe! Ideally I can then make my show with Soho Theatre, and generally do more writing, performing and freelance stuff!

So, there you have it. That’s the plan. Working full-time before meant my old five year plan hasn’t really worked out. But as you can probably tell, I’m itching to write a new one, and even more excited about enjoying the process a bit more, trying to be more present in the moment and generally continue living life to the full, through both tears and laughter!

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