Why the corporate world sucks and freelancing is my forte
No matter how it’s spun, the corporate world sucks. That’s about as blunt as I can make it. Fortunately, it doesn’t need to be that way.
Freelance work is the “get out of the corporate world” free card. And when I say freelance work, I don’t mean exclusively contract work for someone else. That’s the primary meaning, but even that’s overblown.
If you have an entrepreneurial mindset, then freelancing can stem to digital product creation, and anything else your brain can concoct. Are you an author like me? You can start your own indie/self-publishing imprint, engage in digital product creation in other niches, affiliate marketing, and freelance writing, and that’s a good deal of freelance work right there, while keeping the autonomy to run your own ship.
But why go in this direction? If you work full-time for a major corporation, why get rid of the steady pay, benefits, retirement plan, and everything else that comes with the territory? I faced that question for a while.
The answer’s subjective to the individual, but for me, it stems down to three things:
- Peace of mind
- Freedom to live life on my own terms
- I’m subjected to my own time, not someone else’s
That beats the shit out of subjecting oneself to a timeclock for at least five days a week, and between 46 and 50 weeks of the year. So, after being all gung-ho about rejoining the corporate world two years ago, what made me change my perception on it?
Regardless of how you spin it, the corporate world sucks
I rejoined the corporate world remotely, thinking I’d get the best of both worlds here. I’d still be free to work from home, while getting all the goods, like salary, benefits, etc. Retirement I’m not so hot on no matter what, since I don’t believe in the concept. In my mind, retired people lack purpose, and that shit ain’t happening to me.
It’s funny, because after I took that corporate job, I started regretting my decision within months. My time wasn’t mine anymore. And the more I thrived at my job, the more I, ironically, felt like I was walking on eggshells.
The corporation in question may claim otherwise, but I started feeling like I was slapping my name on their work. Then came the sick feeling in my stomach before every eight-to-nine-hour shift, wondering what I was going to suddenly do wrong today that I thought I’d been doing right for months. And in some cases, over a year.
The worst part? I can’t fucking stand corporate lingo. It’s almost like you need to speak another language. One that’s sanitized, artificial, and fake. If you’ve read this author blog for a while, you know how open I am, so speaking corporatese was tearing me apart inside. Literally.
Look, the corporate world sucks, and it doesn’t matter if you’re going to a traditional job or working from a laptop. I realized early that I had to get out, but what had taken me so long?
Fear crept in from exterior forces
You know that saying that goes: “You’re the sum of the five people closest to you.” This was my problem in a nutshell. The more I talked about and contemplated exiting, the more most of those five exterior forces planted the seed of doubt in my mind.
“TC, you’re already investing in this company. You’re gonna need what they’re giving you.” “What are you gonna do for a paycheck? You can’t take a big pay cut.” “Do you really want to give up steady income? You have bills to pay. Think about those.”
I can keep listing the negative feedback. But it warped me. Every time I thought about shifting back into my freelance self, one with a hell of a lot more knowledge on how to make money on my own terms, those seeds of negativity crept in. Doubt followed.
What good did it do? Did it make me see what they thought was reason? If it did, I’d be writing this article from a different angle. It only chained me to a computer screen for nine hours a day and feel worthless, despite the job’s prestige.
Listen to the internal forces only
The takeaway was this: Listen to the internal forces only. Hey, I have ideas upon ideas for my fiction, plus bonuses and other cool tidbits for readers. When I’m finding more ways to drive traffic to my site, but I’m telling my intuition to go fuck off despite it screaming in my ear to sever ties, to me, that means I’m bucking what fate has in store for me. And yeah, that was a long-ass sentence, I agree.
Still, listen to those internal forces. Your intuition is never wrong. When it’s telling you to bail from a situation, you bail. But we’re conditioned to tell it to go screw itself, and that others know what’s best for us.
Well, I can tell you from experience the latter isn’t the case. Listen to your intuition, and I can’t stress that enough. It’s been screaming at me for far too long, and that’s why I’ve decided to head back into the freelance world. Not as a freelance worker, per se, but as someone who’s learned how to make money from multiple cash flows.
One creative way to make money
Earlier, I mentioned that I write fiction, and it’s not your typical, sanitized genre fiction. Hell, if that’s what I write, I may as well stop telling you how much the corporate world sucks, because sanitized work tends to be the preferred method at so many online bookstores.
Instead, I wanted to write fiction that was more than just an escape. Fiction with a theme. Fiction that bites, has never once asked for permission to exist, and something the reader can finish and say to themselves, “Hot damn, I got something from this book.”
And today, I’m gonna offer you one of my books for free. Check out my very first novel, Wind Wielder. It’s genre-fusion at its finest, complete with plenty of action amidst a science fantasy dystopian backdrop. Get it now, and if you crave libertarian themes that spit on corporate-state collusion, then you’re gonna love this book.
