Making a living as a design freelancer can be tough. There are plenty ups and downs, seasons when you’re slammed with work and seasons when you’ll browse endless wanted ads in Craigslist. This time around though, I’ve noticed the news and it has been evident around me that it has become hard to find a job. Who’s to blame? The economy.
Now, my heart goes out to folks who can’t make ends meet. Sometimes that has been me. Actually, a lot of times that has been me. And who’s to say I will be able to make ends meet tomorrow. But during the times where it seemed like the well of projects or work dried up, I noticed a pattern in my thinking. Every time I spoke with someone, somehow the economy came up. Whether it was because of gas prices, unemployment, taxes, etc. It didn’t matter what we were talking about. The economy came up for some weird reason. It didn’t help that I was watching the news.
This wave of negative news began to affect my life and downright depressed me. In a past post, I wrote about turning off the news because I couldn’t handle the negativity anymore. So what happened afterwards? I still held resentment towards how things weren’t going how I wanted. And it’s much easier to direct anger toward something so I labeled mentally…the economy.
Everyone has a right to be angry and upset that Wall Street did this or that and now it’s affecting everyone negatively. I know I was when I was hearing about the big bonuses given to the fat cats at the major banks. Just like everyone else, I was thinking: “Banks are getting bailed out with my money, how come I’m not getting bailed out with my money?”
Given these questions and thoughts, I was presented with some options. I could keep blaming the economy for everything that was happening to me or I can consider that the economy is affecting aspects of my life but I could somehow change my present. I chose the second option but for me I had to do more than just force myself to see it that way. I had to accept things as they were and forgive the economy. If the economy were a person, the forgiveness letter would have gone something like this:
“Economy, you have done it again. You’re being bad. And that’s affecting my finances and job stability. Why can’t you just be more level-headed? I got other things I gotta worry about you know? You’ve been affecting my mood. You have made me angry. And depressed. But I’m tired of being angry and depressed. So I’m going to forgive you and accept that things are the way they are and I cannot do anything about you and how you affect the whole world. So I’m going to do what I can to change my present and if I can’t change it, I’ll accept it. Because otherwise I’m going to go crazy. Alright economy, now that I have forgiven you, I’m going to do my thing.”
Anyway, I’m sure it sounds weird to forgive the economy. But I decided to change the things I could and accept the things I couldn’t and move on. That includes learning new industries, new programming languages, making myself more marketable by expanding my capabilities and networking my tail off.
After forgiving the economy, my attitude improved and peace came back to my life. I still get a little tense when gigs run their course and I have to find more work but I’m just taking it a day at a time and I have to believe that things somehow will work themselves out. At the end of the day, I have control of my attitude and outlook of life. And like a wise person once said: “Disappointments are inevitable, misery is optional.”
One Comment
Hi Rafael, Thank you for your perspective. I was doing my usual routine of contacting colleagues, prospects and friends today to get my week started, and then I stumbled upon your blog posting. You caught my attention at your forgiving the economy letter.
I have to say that I was going thru the motions of moving along and doing what I had to do to get things done. But I realized how I was doing them with resentment. You made me think and motivated me to do the same. I never stopped to forgive and move along with peace. Thank you!