Saturday, March 21, 2015

Six for Saturday: Reading, Watching, Thinking

Porch Swing at the Cabin

Paul Working on His Puzzle

Paul and I took a little vacation this week to his family’s cabin in the woods.  It was the perfect break except for the fact that it was way too short.  We read our books, worked on a puzzle, cooked, and lounged about with no to-do list.  I still did some work (haven’t quite figured out my work-life balance as a freelancer), but it was so nice to work with no appointments to keep and no place to go.  I figure that in this first year of full-time freelancing, every mistake is a chance to learn.  What I learned this week: I need a longer break during spring break—two full days away from the hustle of real life.  As it turns out, most of my students who wanted to meet with me this week canceled their appointments anyway, which makes the idea of being “available” during spring break seem silly.  Next time: a longer break and more lounging!

At The Cabin, I worked on my taxes, and you guys, taxes are seriously bumming me out.  A little backstory: I’ve been doing my own taxes for ten years, so I know my way around a 1040.  But 2014 is my first year of self-employment (SE), and holy god, doing SE taxes SUCKS.  I owe the government close to $2,000, and that’s despite the fact that 2014 was not particularly lucrative for me.  If I thought before this that self-employment was tough, I must amend my statement: I’d say it seems damn near impossible to make it work, to actually make enough money to live as a self-employed person.  Fortunately for me, I didn’t know how bad the tax burden would be, so I carried on cheerfully, meeting students and building my business.  I’m actually really grateful for my ignorance now because not knowing made my life less stressful at a time when I didn’t need any more stress.  I feel like I can handle the reality of SE taxes now, and moving forward, I can make decisions with that knowledge in hand.

But that’s the end of my sighing about taxes.  Onto the Saturday six!  

{ONE}  My book of choice at The Cabin was The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris.  If you haven’t heard of Sam Harris or his work, you are in for a treat: few people are as thoughtful and rigorous in their writing about religion, spirituality, and ethics as Sam Harris.  I’m a huge, huge fan of his work, most of which I’ve only experienced through youtube.  So far, I’m really enjoying The Moral Landscape, and I’m thinking about adding Waking Up, his book about non-religious spirituality, to our next Amazon order.

{TWO}  I’ve been really bummed about call-out culture.  Call-out culture, for those of you who live under a rock like me, is the practice of publicly shaming people who say or do oppressive things (think homophobic, trans-phobic, misogynistic, that sort of thing).  I didn’t even know this practice had a name until today.  But Paul shared this piece with me, and I think it really articulates the problems I see in call-out culture, namely that it’s alienating and dehumanizing.  It seems to bring out the worst in people.  The piece was an interesting read.

{THREE}  I’m thinking about buying some new makeup to go along with the subtle makeover that I’m doing on myself.  At Target, I saw the Pacifica line of products, which are vegan!  Anybody have any experience with Pacifica makeup?  I saw this good review on-line and am thinking about plunking down $14 for a lipstick (but see above re:taxes, hence I haven’t bought any new makeup yet…)

{FOUR}  This piece on pop culture exhaustion made me smile and nod.  I feel the same way: with a few exceptions, I just don’t care much for pop culture.  I have no mental bandwidth for it!

{FIVE}  My Twitter friend Fran recently posted a day in her life as a second-year med student who is studying for boards.  While I am so, so glad I did not go into medicine, I find the lifestyle fascinating.  Fran seems so calm and balanced!  She makes it look easy.

{SIX}  We’ve been making a vegetarian version of this gnocchi recipe with greens and sausage, and it’s outrageously good.  Just sub in your favorite veggie sausage and you are good to go.  It might become your favorite busy-night dinner.  Maybe I’ll post our version of it…

Whew, that’s it from me for now!  What have you been up to lately, my dears?

2 comments:

Chrissy said...

So many great links! I can't wait to dig into all of them. And I hear you on the taxes. I hired someone to do mine, and she saved me a lot, but man - it was hard to pay them! This is part of the reason I just accepted a full time job at a marketing agency (!) which I will write more about later this week. Spoiler alert: I was really conflicted about giving up my freelance business and going back to an office, but it was the best choice for me at this stage in my life. More about all that soon. In the meantime, enjoy the last of your break!

Rosiecat24 said...

Congratulations on the new job, my friend! That is super exciting! I can totally imagine the internal conflict in making that decision. It sounds like you are at peace with your choice :-) Returning to a full-time job after freelancing is an interesting thing to consider--after all, you can always go back to freelancing, but you never know what that return might look like.

One of my bigger victories this semester is that I am having some semblance of a weekend, with Friday off from billable hours and Saturday usually light in terms of scheduled work. I'm super grateful for that--it helps me to feel human again.