I hate my boss; I’m self-employed
Last week one of our Part Time Professionals was in hospital, with her laptop, trying to finish jobs. Don’t get me wrong, we weren’t encouraging her. We told her to relax and recover. She kept working. This is the double-edged sword of being self-employed – you get to be your own boss, but sometimes your boss is a bitch.
Why do I love being self-employed? Partly because when I work my arse off I make more money. When I’m not earning much, I’m having a pretty relaxing time of it. (See what I’ve done there? It’s the optimistic interpretation. Could easily go the other way.) Obviously doing school pick-up and drop-off is a major advantage, as is working from home. When non-Aucklanders give me a hard time about traffic – and you’d be surprised how often that happens – I can honestly say it’s not an issue. Often I’ve found this doesn’t stem the flow of anti-Auckland sentiment, but you can’t win them all. I can take time off when I want to, but I don’t very often, because then I don’t make any money.
Overall, it’s kind of ideal. I hear that quite a bit; ‘You kind of have the perfect job’. I kind of do. Because I carved it out of blood, sweat and tears (okay, you can’t carve liquids, so maybe I moulded it. But that doesn’t sound as good). If you’re going to build your own job, by hand, why would you build anything other than the ideal job? It’s hard enough to build a job in the first place, without building one you hate.
There are bits I’m not keen on. I don’t particularly love taking my laptop on every holiday, ever. I suspect I’m in good company, though. I’m guessing lots of employees are doing the same thing. I sometimes work when I’m sick. That’s not much fun. There’s no sick leave for me and no holiday pay and no Kiwisaver contribution – I don’t like that. I used to hate invoicing, because I had a terrible tendency to screw it up and send the wrong invoices to clients, which was embarrassing and made me look like an idiot. I now pay about $40 a month to Xero and it’s never happened again. Superb use of $40.
Other bits I don’t like? Maybe working at the weekend? Maybe not. I like working. It helps me avoid housework. I’ll do almost anything to avoid housework, including any amount of invoicing, work or running. Please don’t underestimate my hatred of housework. So even though the office is a mess and the boss is a straight-up bitch, I do love being self-employed.