a brief spell of rampant productivity, and...

...another bout of non-work is justified.

This self employment lark is a funny one. The benefits are many - lie-ins and days off whenever I want, the ability to choose who I work for and when I work, the practicality of working from home, not having to watch my back if I'm slacking (like now). The drawbacks are also there - not knowing when the next cheque's coming in and the endless pursuit of new work being the main worries.

I suppose the perks are pretty much all I talk about in relation to my working day, though. This is because I find work a boring subject, unless someone does a really unusual, interesting or worthy job. Most people have pretty dull jobs and go to work because they have to. Myself included. Stuff you have to do doesn't make for interesting conversation, generally. You wouldn't tell someone the ins and outs of when you last changed your sheets, for instance.

So, if I talk about my weekday, 9-5 existence, it's usually about the bits of fun or self indulgence that I decided to undertake. Who wants to know about the chore of plying for new business or debugging HTML code?

The thing is, this seems to have given some people the impression that I'm lazy or idle, that I waste away my time in bed all day and don't do anything of worth. Which bothers me because that's not who I am, or the reality of my self employment. The mental stress of being solely responsible for your own income and wellbeing is considerable. Learning from scratch how to run a business is an enormous learning curve. It's not an easy way out of the world of work, its a tweak of the system.

I think these impressions come from the largely invisible indoctrination to a 9-5 lifestyle that we have in the West. We are brainwashed into thinking work (as in being in employment in order to make money with which to buy things) is something you have to do to be a whole person. You must get up early, you must work hard at whatever is presented to you whether you give a rats arse about it or not, you mustn't stop until the late afternoon. I still sometimes struggle with guilt if I'm not working for 90% of the hours between 9am and 5pm. Even the most anti-capitalist free spirits seem to be thus indoctrinated without fully realising it.

This is utter, utter bullshit. Choosing to work enough to get by and nurture your creative side the rest of the time doesn't make you a less valid member of society. Choosing to sleep in the morning and assign other hours during the day to earning your bread and butter does not mean you are lazy or idle. Choosing to communicate the parts of your day that were creatively productive, self indulgent or just plain fun does not mean you're a work shy layabout, free from the stress of the 'real world'.

I'd recommend my lifestyle to anyone and I will continue to talk about those bits of it that make me happy. Not to rub it in, but because that's who I am and what I'm doing. It seems strange to be judged on who I am and what I do in a way that justifies a system that those who are doing the judging often voice disdain for.