The dilemma of self employment

How we become our jobs

Something I come back to time and time again is asking myself what is the essence of my job. What am I devoted to, what are the reoccurring themes, how do I want to position myself within my creative practice? In the past few months I have had what I might call a crisis of career, a dilemma of self employment, a crossroads of not knowing what it is I do and how I want to do it.

BTS filming a class with Skillshare

In the process of recording the twelve episode season of Common Shapes I found myself week after week coming into very close contact with exactly what my job is. Not just the energetics of what I do, but how I exchange money for time, services, and products. In explaining my process to the people I found myself out of alignment with some of the parts of my own business ecosystem, creating sharp turns away from them and slower turns toward new endeavors.

I have always been quick to pivot and find an ease in ending and starting new things. But the collision of teaching the thing through podcasting and then wanting to end the thing at the same time brought a new crisis of faith that felt unfamiliar.

Something I try to separate myself from is the idea that I am my job. But legally my job is me. Marlee Grace, LLC is the name of my business that I file my taxes under. God given name and all. Yet it is my hope that my skills and offerings stand by themselves in a way that doesn't require you to like me as a person to benefit from my teaching, writing, and sharing.

It is this fear, of not being liked as people, that was created in part from the personal profiles system of social media. And even if you work under a business name you’ve created, the algorithm favors the selfie over all else. Selfie as king in a world of constant and urgent information, we sell ourselves as part of the offering.

The process of the podcast lead me to the final two episodes, which come out this week and next. How to create the offer ecosystem that best nourishes you and your bank account, and next week - how to throw out everything I said in the first eleven episodes and only listen to yourself and how I had to do that with my own advice.

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I find myself longing for two things : more separation between Marlee as a person and the job at hand. And a job that doesn't require anything about my personality. I don’t say this as some fully formed thesis, I write in the undertow of knowing what I’m even talking about. I also think as a queer non binary person and a person dedicated to radical new worlds, I don’t want a complete separation of self and work. That is to say, I wouldn’t pay to subscribe to a newsletter by a Republican whose personal opinions I don’t agree with. This is the dance, how much of the self goes into the work and which parts of our identities are inextricable.

My longing of being a flower farmer was born of this desire. To tend to the flowers, put them in the farmstand, and receive money for the bouquet. That is the job. Not talking about the flower. Not talking about how the flower makes me feel. Just planting the flower and selling the flower and the poem of it all is naturally in between.

While of course I have free will to quit my job as a writer at any moment, writing in this way that I have been doing for over fifteen years publicly is not something I choose, but something that through divine will chooses me.

I find that my 1:1 advising has become a portal I want to tend to, where I feel like I am a channel and can access my coaching archetype in a way that feels separate from me, that doesn't feel like so much of me needs to be woven in. I am the question asker, the facilitator, rowing the boat of creative hope forward.

I am grateful for my job that continues to change and mold itself. As I continue to not have access to social media I find that this dilemma of self / employment comes up even stronger. I didn’t leave and think - ah yes there I am! I left and thought - where am I? Where is everyone I love?

They are there, in the universe of Instagram sharing the details of job and self. They are in other states, far away from the trail up the road, and in the responding to their sharing I found them near me. Warped into the loop of projecting job and inner world in hopes of the offerings standing apart, I feel more separated from my community than I did when I was logged in. I don’t mean to judge those who stay or celebrate those who leave, if anything I share this to say it is not so simple, the leaving.

A loneliness has been crafted by the social media system itself so that no matter which you choose you are isolated and in despair. How we shape the channel becomes a part of the job.¹

I am a writer of the truth and of my life, I do not imagine this will change nor do I feel like I need it to. But I find the experience of having interwoven so much of my personal self into the practical essence of my job has created very little barrier between my spirit and my offerings. Something I didn’t see when I wrote How to Not Always Be Working, but something I see so clearly today.

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In preparing for week one of Teaching as a Practice I started to look at the prompt of what feels safe to teach and what feels risky. And how the fear around the risky choice is not being liked, being abandoned, being rejected. Not as a teacher or as a job, but as the person. Creating exercises to move through this for myself I find the unblocking beginning to happen, seeing more space between me and my classes.

In all of this there is an urgency to get to the end of the transformation. I want to know exactly where I am going and how I got there and sometimes the in between is just where we are for a longtime. I look forward to my future studies and find myself reading again. Reading, exploring, noticing. Watering the garden even though I planted the spinach too close together. Making coffee for my guests. Watching Brenin put on the metal roof to the small studio. Letting Izzy put rocks on me while I lay on the beach. Alyssa curating which books I should read at which times of day.

I have resisted using the term burnout many times over the years. Perhaps as an attempt to stay grateful for my work, self employment as the ultimate goal. How could I say I am burned out when I get to choose my daily work hours, my path, my tasks, the times I walk, when I touch in with others.

For the past few months I have felt like something else was coming, a clear next step. A clear way out of the burnout I hadn’t yet named. There is the waiting and the effort and the letting go that there is a “next”. Letting go of what’s coming and just being in the unknown begs me to pay attention yet again. To let go and let god. To let go and get to work. To see where the trickle of imposter syndrome is actually an invitation to deepen my skillset and take the pressure off of my ego.

This unfolding, while uncomfortable, also allows for quiet expansion. Unseen on the small squares of a slot machine that stopped working, I search for dopamine in new ways. I search for myself in new corners. As a student of quilt history, a devotee to the edge, investing in skill building as a listener and a teacher. My ideas take flight and the trip sometimes is shorter than expected. The landings remain easy and soft, even amidst the turbulence.

May the dilemma be a rearranging of what was, in faith that there is so much more to come

If you are feeling the pull to expand your small business, creative practice, or art making in ways that allow you to be of service through teaching I would love to invite you to join me for two powerful weeks of gathering over five days in my class Teaching as a Practice. Whether you want to craft something simple and short or a curriculum that spans many months, I’d love to fold you into my world of knowing how to use the internet to spread knowledge and skills and come together in learning.

We start this Thursday July 13 at 1pm PST / 4pm EST <3

Scholarships and payment plans available for all

1. I spent the last few days reading Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino and much of these thoughts arose after re-reading the essay The I in the Internet