The Procrastinator
I’ve been sitting here pondering – pondering’s my thing.
I’m a procrastinator. I can sit for hours and hours mulling something over in my head and talk myself out of anything quite easily. I can procrastinate while working, and I can procrastinate while watching tv, hell I can even do it without trying. I am a Master of Procrastination.
This time I’m going to put my superpower to rest and actually write down what’s been bugging me.
As you may or may not know, about ten years ago I left my nice shiny job and moved North. Fast forward to today, and I’m still searching for something I can do to make a decent living, from home and something that I love.
OK, I am a genealogical researcher, and I love it. There is nothing quite like the feeling of connecting someone with their ancestors…people my clients knew nothing about are brought to life and can make their existence known. Sometimes they are hard to find and sometimes we can’t find them, but that’s good too as it gets the client thinking and connecting with their roots. Although the internet is a great tool for sharing, and there are lots of ancestry websites out there, with the popularity of these sites and the multitude of TV programmes devoted to ancestor hunting, there are now more armchair genealogists who refuse to pay (or cant afford to pay for) a professional and just muddle along on their own. Everyone can do it for themselves, but it takes longer and often mistakes are made that professionals could pick up on within minutes. The bottom line is – the bottom has fallen out of my business. Although I love it, genealogical research isn’t paying my bills.
Fair enough, there’s always indexing. I started training about four years ago, and through this time (it’s taken me longer than others as I’ve fitted it in between other things) I have had little in the way of commissions. To add to the problem the bottom seems to be falling out of certain areas of the publishing industry, and if I’m perfectly honest with myself indexing isn’t going to pay the bills either. It’s now more often than not the author who pays for the index, and it seems in these belt-tightening times that the authors are indexing for themselves when they have the time or inclination. Many in the industry seem unaware that indexing is actually a profession that takes a lot of meticulous picking apart of a text and an analytical brain – we are not, contrary to popular opinion, someone who just scans the text into a computer.
So, back to the drawing board. What can a former librarian, who has branched out into research and indexing actually do for a living – and I mean one that may actually pay some bills around here?
In the past I kept myself very busy with night-classes and workshops, so far I’ve learned a little about archaeology, aerial archaeology, house histories, palaeography, numismatism, felt-making, paper-making, glass-making, Tarot reading, fractal artwork…and I’m sure there are other things that elude me at the moment. I love art and the art world. I’d love to be able to do something in that direction but I’m also aware it doesn’t pay. I would love to go to art school, but at the age of 40 and being nowhere near an art school I have to acknowledge that that will probably never happen.
So….which direction can I go in? I need to work from home so it looks like I have to figure out what I want and what is feasible.
See….procrastinating again!
I’m at a total loss, and though I thought that writing this down would help it doesn’t, it just makes me procrastinate more! I am going to have to re-train to do something, but no matter how hard I try I cannot see anything in the future that screams at me. This is not a self-pitying, soul searching blog entry….far from it…it’s more a brain-storm in public.
For now it seems I must accept that I have a super-power and it’s one of treading water, keeping me eyes out for something new….and procrastinating.
Just call me….The Procrastinator
BTW…not missing the Rayburn at all…but my new cooker had a knob drop off before I even got to use it (still not been fixed) Story of my life! lol
Establish what all your blocks are that prevent you from moving inthe direction that you want to go?
Also, why do you ‘have’ to work from home? Isn’t that maybe limiting your options a bit?
Set up your own e-commerce shop for your own artwork?
Ali xxx
aah but thats the thing…..I dont know which direction I want to go in! lol
Could you put together some ‘how to’ genealogy guides, to sell to all those armchair genealogists…?
I’d be wary of the re-training idea – I feel that training is often over-rated. Doing something, rather than training in it, is way more effective – unless you need a qualification as a ticket to be allowed in the door of some profession or other. And from what you describe above, you can already do loads.
Open College of Arts does distance learning art school…? I’d join you on that one…!
Trying to find a way to be creative, entrepreneurial, working from home, doing something cool… Gosh, but it all sounds so familiar…
difficult isnt it. I think you may be right about the training, hands on can be so much better…oooh but art school, that would be sooo good. But I’m an old bird now.
I can totally identify with this – since my redundancy a couple of years ago, I’ve looked into various options for working from home, indeed I’d only be aiming for about £5k p.a.:
– selling fine art prints (total 2)
– selling other art merchandise (1 postcard)
– stock art (just couldn’t maintain any passion)
– web design (1 successful commission, supposedly 1 in the pipeline)
– freelancing (always going to be beaten by those guys in India who’ll do the job for a bowl of rice)
I know any further attempts will be equally futile as I feel uniquely unqualified to deal with the world. Here’s to the unexpected windfalls of Procrastination :fingerscrossed:
You and me both, the real world is SO over-rated!
As for freelancing, yup it does seem to me that out-sourcing is a killer – we just cant compete on price
Indexing: The bottom’s not falling out of the market, it’s just changing, like everything else. Here’s what’s happening in my end of the indexing world: Lots of work, but downward pressure on rates. Hard to do scholarlies (slow work in indexing) and make enough, but with tech docs, how-to, textbooks (they go faster), can make more at lower rates. Ah, and the wave of the future that I see with introduction of Kindle and now iPad is the need for embedded indexing in documents to take into account page flow changes. Full text search will not be intelligent enough. I think people will still want indexes. I will be investing in software so that i can quickly embed index tags in Word, and may also need to get InDesign. I think I’ll still be making an excellent freelance living at indexing and editing for some time.
The problem I see is actually maintaining a decent hourly rate – when publishers say there are those ready to accept $2 a page or less it’s very disheartening.
Embedded does seem to be the way to go, but in the course I did there is no training on that…so I’ll have to get down to some new training. The software can be expensive and it just fills me with a sense of weariness.
Sometimes I feel like a hamster on a wheel, trying to chase the jobs but getting no further. Indexers do seem to be the bottom of the pile in publishing with few in the industry actually understanding what is really involved.
Ah, sounds like you need to get to the SI conference. I’m missing out on the American version due to finances, but if you can pull it off, especially since you are trying to get started, it would be a great way to pump you up and more importantly, to get some workshops in on stuff that you’re interested in. I know the American Society for Indexing’s conference will have training sessions on embedded indexing in Word and InDesign. And there’s nothing to beat networking with fellow professionals.
Art work: I agree with one of the other commenters about your artwork. You may have too many things going on at once, to start with, or maybe selling them eclectically would actually work on something like Etsy. I’m most familiar with the fractals and think you can sell them for wallpapers onscreen as well as print versions. But it will take some work to get yourself established on Etsy and channel your network and others to your site regularly. This is where the procrastination really comes in. Know you love your art–think about why you’re having trouble being inspired to push it out there. I know how it feels, though. I do the same procrastination with my writing….