Make. Good. Art.

Neil Gaiman’s commencement speech to the University of the Arts found me a couple of years ago. At the time, I’d just lived through the equivalent of a mother’s existential dilemma. I have a scattering of essays I’ve tried to write about that time, those months, but keeping it in my past has been enough. We’ve recovered. Well, we still work at recovering.
Snapshot_20130319_1Pursing an art degree as a single mom has always been a struggle for me. Not just in the act of going to school. I felt like my status as a solo mom and a low-income one at that didn’t allow me art degrees. I thought I should be getting a two-year degree for a fast-track path to getting a job as an administrative assistant. Anything that would earn me an 8-5 office job with some benefits and enough pay to just barely not qualify for government assistance. And that would be my life. I’d wake up, get the kids ready, and go to work.
But that’s never been my life.
Working as a freelancer adds a special sort of stress. Yes, you make your own hours, are your own boss, and don’t have to ask permission to take a day off. But you don’t apply once for work. You apply again and again. You have work disappear and you have no one to go to for more hours. It’s up to you to get out there, promote yourself, and earn their trust that you’ll do a good job.
Two weeks ago I wrote about feeling despaired over not having any work. In the last week I’ve started my position at an academic writing firm with a vengeance. I have one client I’ll write content for. ESME.net asked me to write a few pieces for them. And I still have my editing job with MissoulaEvents. It’s finally enough for the words “I WORK” to flash in my mind. It’s a sense of pride to pay the bills and have a little bit left over. It’s a sense of hope to think I might be on track to having enough to pay off the debts I’ve been making minimum payments on to keep in good standing.
It’s a sense of maybe feeling like my refusal to sink into a full-time office job until I retire, get tattooed all over my arms, and stubbornly try to hack a writing career out of nothing but my own determination was a pretty awesome idea. That’s always been my mountain, like Gaiman speaks of.
Then this happened.
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It’s like a nod. A congratulatory nod. It’s a blessing. Not because I’ve made it to the top of the mountain. I’m nowhere near it. But I kept trekking. I keep trekking.
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"More!" "Yay!"

Coraline turns ten months in a few days. She’s standing on her own. She signs “hi” at her own appropriate times, but hardly ever when I ask if she wants to wave at a friend who’s waving back. I often find her signing a combination of “more” and hand-clapping for “yay!” when she’s playing or eating.
I feel the same way about work.
0411151313Since my last entry, I had an essay published in a local magazine. I got hired on as a writer for a website specifically for single moms. My employment with another writing firm completely took off as well, leaving me a little bewildered, but saying “more!yay!” in my mind. I add up dollars over and over, planning for the bills I can pay off, the money I can save, and the possible road trip we can take.
I’m looking at a daycare for Coraline this week, which hurts a little. But I can’t go on staying up until 1 or 2 every night working like this while trying to get a good 20 minutes in here and there during the day. I guess I could for a little longer. I’ve gotten used to working at all hours of the day, every day, at something. I’ve been going non-stop for a few months. Trying. Trying to get to where I am now.
Fifteen years ago, I thought I’d grow up one day and be a writer. Ten years ago I wanted to get paid for it. And five years ago I started the journey to get the degree so I could.
Babies, we just might make it.
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Goals–Dreams with Deadlines

A knot usually builds in my stomach at the beginning of the month. It’s a turnover of bills that are due, namely rent and that one private student loan payment I can’t defer. I’ve looked for work seriously for the past couple of months. As a freelancer, I figure at least five regular clients with added one-time jobs will be necessary to be lucrative. I currently have one, and the added two who have hired me but I haven’t worked at yet. I’ve found in this industry, getting from “hired” to “paid” is a big leap.
Snapshot_20150302Last night, I sat and stared at the closed blinds. Coraline slept in my arms. I’d overspent on stuff for Easter by five bucks, starting the dance of waiting for paychecks and direct deposits before checks clear. I thought maybe I was getting depressed. I’d been scrambling and scraping for too long. The last year has been especially tough, often not having enough, but we’d made it. I’d found an apartment we could afford. All the years of college, of toiling over words, of long hours promoting myself, gave me this launching point. We’d made it to me growing my online platform to something I could be proud of, enough to go out and ask people to hire me to write for them. I felt like jumping up and saying a proud “TA DAH!” and presenting Stephanie Land, Freelance Writer, and all the jobs would come in. My small amount of income would triple, I’d pay off my credit cards, and I’d be able to leave the state and take the girls on a trip somewhere. But all of these weeks went by so fast, and it was suddenly four months into the year and I’d only accomplished a fraction of my financial goals.
DSCN1509Recovering from putting myself through college with a newborn was harder than I’d thought. I had no idea I’d suffer from a fear of my own mortalityI didn’t think I’d be so enraptured with Coraline that months of having barely enough income and support to pay the bills would be worth it. But I still made progress. I secured good shelter. I gathered resources to help us through this (hopefully) last time of needing them. I lowered my monthly bills by $140 while adding life insurance. I used my tax refund to pay off a third of my credit card debt and transferred another chunk to one with 0% interest. I applied for funding to write a book. I wrote. I submitted. I got published and started the process again.
I hope this foundation will carry us through the next several years.  
But last night I felt sorry for myself, tired and weary of the struggle. I searched online for blogs written by other single moms who had done the same. Who had their kids full-time. Who’d gone from depending on government assistance to successful careers. But most of them were written by former stay-at-home moms who’d divorced. A lot of them focused on dating. Then I stumbled on singlemomsincome.com and this lady had gathered a whole list of ways to work at home. She has ebooks and links and words of encouragement. Enough that I felt inspired. But it still came from a post-divorce woman. Someone who’d started her family with a platform of marriage, and had a partner in the beginning. Her kids visited their dad every other weekend.  
I thought instead of occasionally posting on here, I should do so with purpose. In the next few weeks, I’ll add a tab that lists resources I’ve used when my total incoming money was less than a thousand dollars. Sometimes a lot less. Writing or talking about living well below the poverty level hasn’t been an easy topic for me. I hold on to a lot of shame and guilt surrounding it all. It’s time to let that go.
With luck, this blog might reach another full-time solo mom, desperate to not have to fill out applications for assistance and pay all her bills while affording dinner out. Maybe she’s a survivor of abuse, too. Maybe she’s estranged from her family like we are. And I can comfort her a bit, or give her confidence, and say “I know, I’ve been there, too.”
That’s who I’m writing for. That’s who I’ve always written for.
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