ErinLaing.com

Mary Beth Ellis has a very entertaining post over at freelanceswitch called “Friends with structure.”

From the opening paragraph:

“This is about structure,” the therapist said.

I’m sitting across from her because my husband found me sobbing into the carpet of my home office, again, some more. She’s sitting there because I’ve reached the point, now, where I need to pay people to listen to me.

“I thought this was about huge, huge amounts of anti-depressants.”

“No. For the first time in your life, you don’t have outside structure dictating your every move. And it is affecting your writing, and you are very angry.”

And I thought I was alone in the ‘sobbing into the carpet of my home office’ department.

I’m sure anyone who works as a freelancer can relate to this piece. Being your own boss is not easy - despite what some 9 - 5ers think.

I know I’m constantly finding different ways to give my days more structure. I recently rented office space and now I have somewhere to go every day from 10am to 6pm.

I make lists and I try and set small ‘achievable goals’ on a daily basis so that I feel I’ve accomplished something by the end of the day. I think this sort of thing is necessary, especially when the overall goals can take months, sometimes years to achieve.