One of the reasons I wanted this type of freelance work is that I imagined I would be traveling while doing it.
Until about half a year ago, this was impossible. It wasn’t impossible because it was actually impossible; it was impossible because I thought it was impossible. Then half a year ago, through a series of events that allowed me to release some delusions, it became so clear that I could in fact travel while doing everything I am already doing when I’m not traveling.
Yet I wasn’t traveling. That’s when I realized that money was never the problem. I mean, it can be part of the problem, but money is rarely the entirety of the problem. One might think that money can solve many problems (which can be true) but usually, there is something else that one thinks money will get them: opportunity, for example.
I cannot buy opportunity with money, at least not the type of opportunity I desire. I’ve traveled enough from my childhood onward to not crave traveling itself; what I want these days, if I were to travel, is things that I can only get in a specific location with specific people.
- Example of what I don’t want (anymore): visiting tourist locations that I can access anytime by paying for flight tickets, arranging my schedule, being in moderately good health, etc.
- Example of what I do want (now): being an “insider” in a place/organization that will add lived texture to my next novel. Stuff that research through second-hand media will not get me.
Basically, any trip that doesn’t even last a month, I don’t want. There are so many things that you can catch just by being in one place for at least three months. But even better would be if I could be inside a place/organization during those three+ months.
I am wondering if I should get a job just for this purpose.
I think it was good that I got into corporate right after getting a degree, because experiencing an office environment would’ve been something I would’ve wanted to do, had I not had it already. I have 4-5 years of being in various office environments, and I have many more years of freelance environment experience, so I don’t desire those things actively.
I want a new type of work/living/existing experience.
This is a new desire that I noticed only this spring. Late March-ish.