A Quality Life: What does that even mean?

I’ve been thinking about what a ‘Quality Life’ means.

What it means to others.

What it means to my close family members.

What it means to my husband.

What it means to deep thinkers.

And most importantly what it means to me.

The answers have been varied and absolutely fascinating!

Not my vision of a quality life, but I can totally see the appeal.

One woman wanted to sell the family home and travel around the country in an RV.

I didn’t want to appear as though I was passing judgement. You know how I can come across that way when I feel like I’m asking reasonable questions - as though I’m poking holes in someone else’s dream, when I so badly want them to skew the odds in their favor, or I want to live the dream with them, at least in the moment. Being detailed oriented is a curse.

The thought that occurred to me was ‘Why aren’t you doing this now?’

I realized some possibilities, she could be too far north to endure the winters in an RV, maybe her work isn’t as remote as it could be, maybe she has small children and she has to wait until they are all grown, maybe work is a factor. This is an internet stranger, I shouldn’t be so afraid of asking for more context, yet here we are.

I am routinely accused of being a ‘hater’ or a ‘naysayer’ when I ask questions. Even if I start the question with “Have you thought of…?” or “Have you considered…?” I don’t know, I’m kind of tired of being accused of being condescending when I’m just trying to figure out the odds of success. Is this something worth investing MY emotional energy on? I don’t care if they spend their emotional energy on their dream, they should. I don’t think dreaming is stupid, but bring a dream into reality kind of needs a bit more than a passing thought…

They might not have considered all of their option, or maybe they have. I don’t know, I’ve stopped asking. Then again, if this might not be the first mention of the grand dream.

I don’t know how many times I got the: “If you’re so unhappy, why don’t you move out?” when it came to my living situation a few years back.

The thing is I had thought about it.

A lot.

It’s an obvious solution to a critical problem with no prospect of required behavioral change of a lifetime abusive narcist. Caring for her wasn’t why I was there. I was there to take some of the burden from my dad.

It’s such an obvious solution too. So obvious that it’s the first people say when the topic came up, and because of the headspace I was in, it came up. A LOT. And HELLO MR. OBVIOUS would come knocking.

It got under my skin after a while.

Yeah, I had thought about it. And YET HERE I AM!

Truth is I wasn’t willing to sacrifice my relationship with now husband, so I could rent an overpriced trash-heap from a slum lord, and put up the obnoxious behaviors of my neighbors (for all I know I’m the obnoxious one in their world)… just for something that resembles peace of mind.

Would I really even have it?

One challenging parent (as one hyper positivity co-worker put to subliminally gas light me into accepting my mother’s terrible behaviour. Because she doesn’t want any negativity in her life, there fore I could not express the challenges I was going through in mine) was plenty, but would I exchange known variables for an unknown number of problematic neighbors. I mean the areas I could afford were… I mean drugs were going to be an issue, and robbery… Room-mates? I live with a control freak during college. People, unless you curate them are too much of a challenge to take a gamble on. I mean seriously, have you met people? They’re nuts!

On top of that, I’d have the pressure of maintaining a full-time job (God, I hated those chains) – I mean I’ve done it before. There’s nothing quite like being told you’re useless and replaceable while you're doing the job of 5 people, and everyone else gets to go home at 5 but no… I’m so useless, I HAVE to come in at the weekend just to keep up with the major projects they keep giving me. Sorry, that’s a bit of a raw nerve that I find myself poking at a lot these days.

See I have to actually look for job, like in the near future. Stick with me on this tangent, it does loop back around.

My stories are bringing in royalties, STILL, years later, even without me promoting them. My business is still bringing a nice chunky contract, pretty much yearly. I’m blessed on these fronts.

The draw back is, neither is stable.

I mean I can plan around the income I actually have acquired, but projecting future income – that there is madness. Nothing is consistent. Even the chunky contract which was supposed to happen last April, is supposed to happen in October. Given the issues that organization is dealing with I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it next year. I can’t plan around money I might earn in the future.

So… the job.

I’ve been torturing myself with this really.

A traditional job is NOT part of a quality life.

No one chooses an abusive relationship. There might be some ignoring of red flags, but it’s once you’re in… getting out is a nightmare.

I’ve had bosses tell me that they know everyone in city I was living at the time, and that I’d NEVER get another job in the city. The source of the threat was that I wanted a pay raise, and all of sudden I had an attitude problem. I recall shrugging my shoulders, and said “Well I guess this my notice.” To which my manager followed up with a barrage of insults and threats. Loosing me cost them $250,000 to replace me – and not even fully. Those ‘monkeys’ corrupted 10 years of entertainment assets meaning, any production we wanted to revive… well, it all had to start from scratch, which means more time, more money, more talent acquisition.

I’m sure I’ve told you this story before. I should really let it go, but it was such a formative moment for me.

You know that saying, that if it keeps happening, the problem is you.

Well, I guess the problem is me. So I tried to create conditions that would work for me.

It doesn’t change what I have to do, but it does change my approach. My time these days is way more valuable to me than money. I’m lucky to be able to say that. I have no fear of losing my home, having to skip a meal, or being forced to buy half rotted food because it’s on discount. My husband is a bigger food snob than I am, but I do prefer cooking from whole ingredients – if I can get them from my garden even better!

I’m thinking if I have to subject myself to potential abuse (and there are an awful lot of stories to that effect), I’d try to at least limit my exposure. I figure min wage (even though I’m worth more), I don’t want to deal with the corporate BS that comes with a higher salary.

I like being able to sleep at night.

I prefer not to see the customers as ‘easy marks’ or ‘suckers’.

I don’t like looking at the core workforce for the company as a ‘bunch of idiots to be taken advantage of’. Even when I was working for the Feds, there was this sense that the staff was… well replaceable. A dime a dozen. The churn was insane. Now, I wasn’t too keen on how these employees treated the cleaners or our cooks at the cafeteria, but that’s a them problem. I got tons of free meals because I was actually nice to them, and chatted with them on break. I kind of miss those interactions with my betters (yes, I mean the serving staff, not my coworkers).

Still, I don’t want to work in a office. I’ve learn an awful lot about my work methods, and how I actually get work done. I’m told however that I have this whole work thing all wrong. They’re probably right. I mean was never rewarded for getting work done. I always ended up with more responsibilities, and when I asked for a raise, I was inevitably without a job. You can see why I didn’t exactly jump at the chance of getting into bed with a slum lord for ‘a little peace of mind’.

I worry about my ability to hold down a job. But then that’s like saying, you suck at relationships because you left the person who was verbally beating you down. So silly. I should really be mercenary in my approach.

“This is what I want. I’m compromising pay to get a pure remote job. If you want me the office, then I expect my previous salary at a minimum. Don’t want to pay that, let’s drop this 40hrs a week thing to something reasonable… like 2 days a week.”

It’s a pipedream, but I know I’m worth 250K+. Have I ever got that? Lol, no. But I know I’m worth that much, because they DID replace me at great cost to them.

I still smile about that.

They’re bankrupt now, sadly not due to poor management.

No, poor management just lead to massive turn over rates, and they started attracting low tier talent who couldn’t get jobs at bigger name studios (because they needed five years work experience right out of college). Anyway, the stuff I was doing was and remains a transferrable skill set. I’m also lucky in that I can afford to be super picky. I’m sure they’re find someone who needs the work more than I do, but min wage jobs are a dime a dozen. Now it’s not like I’m going to work in retail or customer service… never again.

You’re probably wondering why I opened with quality of life and ended up rambling about a job I apparently don’t want. The thing is job does serve a purpose to the quality of life calculation. Like I said, I make my money in bursts, but it’s not predictable. I’d like to invest, maybe even look into a private pension. I know I have a few renos on my wish list, and if the contract with the company actually happens in October, we can schedule a guy to come in the Spring to do the repairs.

Cabin in the woods isn't quite my thing, but it's pretty close.

I’ve not so much been thinking about building wealth, while it is a factor, I’ve been considering how to insulate myself from the outside world. I have been through far too many layoff cycles, only to get a call back some few months later asking me to return (no, not at an increased salary who do I think I am?!). The way I’ve insulated myself from corporate shenanigans was going into business for myself.

Truth be told, I hate hunting for clients.

“My nephew will build me a website for a case of beer!”

I’m sure he will. Good luck getting that updated. I was that niece.

Family perks end when you become a pain in the ass about what I basically built you for free, which by the way cost 10-20hrs to build. Just because you don’t value my time doesn’t mean I don’t have anything better to do. Thanks for the pizza!

It really didn’t get any better with time.

I’ve won fucking awards for my fucking sites for fuck sakes! And I STILL GET “I can it cheaper at Walmart” equivalent. I think I hate people. No. I hate entitled pricks who don’t appreciate the time or knowledge that goes into making these things. WAH Me! That’s life right. At some point, we’re all that asshole. Let’s try not to be. We can do better.

Worst, I had one client who even after I said, “I’ll charge you this price and I’ll guide you toward optimal strategies to get your message out there.” They were in a weird place where they needed a web presence but didn’t want to advertise but also needed to advertise. They had slots for services that needed filling but they were afraid of the potential demand. You know, the good problem to have. “OR, you can go with a design firm, get billed anywhere between 3 to 5 times as much, get a 3rd of the quality BUT get exactly what you want, no arguments, no advice, no insight. You’ll have some one to do as they are told, based on what you understand of the job you’re hiring them to do, not someone who is an actual expert at helping you achieve your business objectives.”

Now I didn’t exactly say that in those exact words, in that exact order, but those were the key points. I did end up doing the work based on my price point alone.

The CEO hated me, because she didn’t like that I wasn’t going to let her walk all over me. She needed absolute control over everything, but I refused to be micro managed.

I gave her her account information (it was her website after all) and told her that if she could figure out how to make the changes herself, she was more than welcome to make the changes. I had other critical domain for the website architecture to address in order to make deadline, and that changing the back ground image for unpublished website for upteenth time was not a productive use of my time, and that next time, she’d be billed $150 per background change. It might seem unreasonable to you, but I had a deadline, and changing out the background from some home photos of babies every few days was simply not a good use of my time.

For context, I had taken the time to explain how stock photos works and licensing and so on, which obviously scared her into trying to find a personal unprofessional photo to represent the theme of her business. No… all that does, my friend, is open her business up to a whole other set of laws, like using someone’s likeness for business use without their permission. It’s just a background! you’re thinking. This was someone’s kid getting his or her face plastered all over the internet to represent a brand ethos. Even the ketchup kid got paid for Heinz’s use of his person in those ads.

In the end, she didn’t figure it out. She was not any good with technology, at all. Didn’t understand that laptops need to be charged or plugged in if they’re going to be the primary work station. But I didn’t clue in until much later about how outside of her comfort zone my work actually was, AND STILL she insisted on micromanaging the work!

She got mad. Really mad. So mad, that when they hit a longevity milestone with their company, she decided it was time to rebrand. She went with a firm. Paid four times what I had charged her (after all of the scope creep items were included), and true to my word only got a WordPress theme, with a handful of pages that didn’t even cross link. Their usage rate plummeted and now the new CEO is considering if having a website at all is worth it. Although, the new CEO has worked with me in the past, and I heard a rumor that she’s been asking if this is a project I would be willing to revisit.

The thing is, these days there are so many nice services out there. I use Squarespace these days (OMG they are so expensive!), so I might just point to those sites, do a prelim concept for them and charge A LOT less because I’m not really building infrastructure the same way I used to. I don’t know. It’s whisper, not something worth planning for.

Insulating myself…. You know, I feel like a sensible person would have tried to be nicer. Kowtowed to whatever demands just for the chance at licking some corporate contracts. My husband has a friend like that “Just do as your told and give them the bill. They’re not paying you to do the job, their paying you to feel important.” Fuck that! I have better things to do with my time!

Why degrade myself like that? I’m sure someone else will, but I don’t have to.

Again, I’m grateful that I can go into a meeting, state this is how it’s going to go down, and then walk out, go for a coffee and then not think about it short of sharing some of my ridiculous antics with you.

At some point in the summer months, I had this fantasy, where I owned a largish house where my mother-in-law, my dad, my uncle (long story), my husband and myself lived. It’s be between 5 to 10 acres, there’s a walking trail and likely near a river or lake. Dad and I would grow food, fruit trees, struggle with our garden. Come fall, we’d make preserves and store them in the basement. We’d have some chickens because my dad and I are egg fiends. We’d probably grow a pig and a cow for slaughter, but I suspect the year-on-year cost might be not worth the hardship… I’ll have to math that scenario. Meanwhile, my mother-in-law would have a large garden to play in that isn’t uphill, and we’d have access to better resources than what’s available here in the UK. (It feels so weirdly restricted. Like having a flower garden is acceptable, but how dare you even attempt to grow your own food outside of decorative purposes! It’s so weird. Everything out here supports flowers.)

My husband would be retired… though I have feelings about him just gaming the rest of his life away. If he doesn’t make himself useful, there will be words.

I would be writing.

Which bring me back to question I had wanted to ask the lady with the dream of touring the country in her RV. “Why not now?”

To that question, I hang my head. It’s so obvious. I have no reason.

So, yes, now. Even while I wrestle with this amorphous idea of what a quality life looks like for me, or more importantly what it doesn’t look like, writing IS something I can do right now.