On Saying No

Careers

saying-no

“We may be socialized to be friendly and accommodating, but nobody can do it all, and that’s why we need to protect our time by saying no, even if it’s hard.” I’m sure you’ve heard this a hundred times. That’s not what this essay is about. I’m perhaps too good at saying no.

In person, I’m really loud and outgoing. So much, in fact, that people don’t realize I’m an introvert until I tell them. But as much as I love other people, I say no to social obligations a lot. I know this makes me seem sort of chilly, but I recently told someone I keep a checklist of my friends and family members every month, and make sure to check each name off the list to make sure I’ve checked in with them recently. She was horrified that I treat my social connections “like a to-do list.” I’m just trying to stay in touch efficiently!

My work follows this same sort of “check-in” routine. Instead of scheduling myself silly trying to do all of the things at once, in February I showed you how I do a little of everything, a little at a time. The downside of a routine like this, however, is that it balances all my obligations equally. And when people invite me to take on exciting new work, it’s harder to accept than it should be.

Lately, I’ve been going down memory lane and thinking about some of the key times I said no, which could have opened up a different path in my career.

In 2013, I got an offer to work full time for Goboiano. Today, it’s the Buzzfeed of anime, but back then, it was an empty placeholder. They told me “we predict an incredible growth rate,” but I’ve heard that before, and declined. I had no inkling that in this one rare case, it would be true!

Also in 2013, I left my job at the Daily Dot. I started in 2012 as one of their first reporters. Startup life was hard. Since there weren’t very many of us, we all had to give 110% and work long hours. There were times I wrote five articles in a day, or 20 in a week! I burnt out, hard. After realizing I’d lost ten pounds purely from stress, I resigned. But today, the Daily Dot has 7 million Facebook fans and a team of dozens! I have given recommendations for journalist friends applying there, who love their jobs. I started at the beginning and didn’t stick around long enough to see the Daily Dot become something. If I had stuck around, that could have been me.

In 2015, I started writing for Forbes. In my first full month, July, I wrote an article for my Forbes blog nearly every day. But at the end of that month, when I got my paycheck of just $1,500, I decided to scale back to the bare minimum and focus my talents elsewhere. And yet, there are people who make six figures a year writing for Forbes out of pure tenacity. If I had decided to keep Forbes as my main gig, maybe I’d be making bank, too.

Also in 2015, I started interviewing for technology jobs just to see if I was still hirable. I turned down a full-time job before deciding on my part-time web developer job. If I had picked the former, I would have a large, steady source of income right now and, better yet, a clear divide between work and play—I’d work at the office and relax at home. If I hadn’t said no to a traditional job, would I be happier right now?

Right now, I am on the cusp of a major project launch that I’ve been working on all year (more on that Friday). For weeks, I’ve spent the majority of my free time in my apartment, combing through data and planning a launch schedule. I’ve invested a lot of time and money into this and I’m at the same point I was with these pivotal “no’s”: I have no idea if this will pay off. My “no’s” come from uncertainty, from mistrust, and ultimately, from fear. My fear of wasting my time on something that doesn’t work out is stronger than my fear of missing out.

The “no’s” in my life are what might have been. But the “yes’s” are the branches that formed who I am today. I said yes to journalism graduate school. I said yes to a job as a technology writer, which in turn reminded me that I’ve always liked tinkering with computers, and that I wanted to build those skills on a professional level. I said yes to learning Japanese at the advanced age of 27, and making it a priority to visit Japan. And of course, every time I write here, I’m saying that yes, writing regularly online is one of the most important things that I do, a sole consistent thing in my life over the past six, almost seven years!

Before I say yes to something on I ask myself:

  • Will this work be something I’d be proud to add to my portfolio?
  • Does this work factor into a subject or community that I care about?
  • Will this work teach me something new?

And before I say no, I ask myself:

  • Will this work negatively affect my health and mood?
  • Will this work keep me from working on something that truly matters to me?
  • Before I move on, have I learned all I can from this work?

Nobody knows the future. We never know if today’s decisions will lead to satisfaction or regret. The only thing we can do is move forward, and choose work that helps us do that.

Photo by Henry Burrows

Otaku Links: Fanservice and fursuits

Otaku Links

otaku-links-fursuits

Photo by K B

July 2016 Income Report

Careers, Income Reports

july-2016

Thanks for being so cool about last month’s income report. It can be scary to share this stuff and wonder how people are going to judge me, but I have great readers. So I’m gonna be more open about numbers now.

Financially, this month SUCKED. After taxes, I took home $1,276.36—about half of what I made last month. Worse, I am still owed $2,650.00 for various freelance jobs I’ve done since April. Some of that is from stuff I worked on in June and July, so it’s not technically due yet, but when I am making about $1,000 in a month, I really hope I’ll see some of that soon.

Part of this is my fault. I checked my spreadsheet and noticed I sent an invoice on June 13, and after that I never contacted the client to follow up. It’s important to follow up every 7 days and make sure payments are on track because it’s likely the client has more freelancers than just you. I used to resent this part of freelancing until I realized how organized I need to be to remember to pay my own contributors on time.

july-income

july-compare

This second pie chart might be incorrect math, because the dark blue part is even for both months. I make generally the same amount at my day job every month, plus or minus a few overtime dollars. But what I am trying to show with this chart is that I took home about half of what I did last month.

When my freelance work isn’t going well, my finances as a whole suffer. Ideally, the pie chart should be 50% dark blue, 25% light blue, and 25% medium blue. That would mean that 75% of my income is from me working hard, and 25% just comes in as passive Amazon income, yay!

The problem with this month’s earning is that at the beginning of the year, I mapped out my total yearly income (and day job tax withholding) with the 50-25-25 assumption in mind. Since that’s not happening, I’ll probably get a big tax return in April 2017, but I’d rather be meeting my expected income goals instead.

july-profit

Even during a low month, I still pay about the same amount on expenditures. I have to pay my Gunpla 101 contributors, my web hosting, and my Freckle time-tracker fee. That means this profit vs. loss bar is teetering closer to 50-50 than I’d like.

Overall, this is kind of embarrassing. This summer is a low point in my five-year freelance career. My day job doesn’t pay much (and the extreme withholding doesn’t help) but it takes up a lot of my time, so I don’t spend as much time looking for new freelance opportunities or hounding my current clients to pay me what I’m owed. On the other hand, it gives me a higher baseline so even if I do have a crappy month in which nobody else pays me, I can still pay all my bills. (Definitely won’t be putting anything in savings this month, though, which could be a problem if I subsist like this for too long.)

My August financial goals are:

  • Get paid. Contact everyone who owes me and get those checks in the mail.
  • Beef up my affiliate sites with new content. If my freelance work isn’t going to pay the bills, maybe the key is to make Amazon go from 25 to 50% of the pie chart.
  • Limit spending. I’ve been going out to eat a lot lately, and that’s my biggest money weakness. I want to be able to put money in my savings account next month.

How’d your July go? Any financial goals for the month to come?

Previously: June 2016 Income Report

Otaku Links: 100% Politics Free

Otaku Links

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Politics are important, but after a week of work at a political organization by day, and watching the Democratic National Convention by night, I’m ready to forget they exist for a few days and catch up on anime.

  • After the popularity of Love Live, is Love Live: Sunshine going to be a ho-hum sequel or something that can truly shine on its own? Louis weighs in on the ways that Love Live: Sunshine both acknowledges and subverts its predecessor.
  • What do you think about Secret deodorant’s tone-deaf cosplay tweet? I am happy that brands are interested in appealing to our particular demographic (see: Nature Valley), but this was a clear misstep.

Photo by slgckgc on Flickr

None of this is your fault.

Careers, Fandom

not-your-fault

When I was in middle school, I would sometimes come home in tears, crying to my parents that the other kids had picked on me.

After a few episodes of this, my parents taught me a very lasting, if not exactly helpful lesson—if people are picking on you, it is 50% their fault, and 50% yours. We agreed that the kids shouldn’t have been mean to be, but they also made sure I acknowledged my role as a target. We considered my flaws. I was bad at sports, and didn’t try to get better. I refused to wear the Abercrombie & Fitch clothing that was popular with girls my age (I claimed “you’re buying a label, not a shirt,” which I certainly must have read somewhere). And worst of all, I decorated my school binders with printed-out pictures of anime characters and was mercilessly teased for it.

My parents helped me realize how my own behaviors made me an easy target for the other kids, and eventually I toned things down. Gradually, I started martial arts, went clothes shopping at the mall, and didn’t even watch anime for several years. And sure enough, I stopped getting picked on. It helps that I met a great group in 9th grade who I am still friends with to this day.

I became a person who was very risk averse, and I still am this way today. Though I’m fairly vocal on the internet, in person, I work really hard not to stand out.

Which is why I couldn’t understand why my new coworker seemed to have such a problem with me.

I was nervous about being the first woman on the web development team, but most of the guys treated me well. Except one. Steve (not his real name) wouldn’t leave me alone. He teased me about my appearance, saying that if a girl was going to join our department, he wished it had been a pretty one. He publically pointed out my mistakes, and blamed me for bugs in the code even when it was a project I didn’t work on. He made jokes that just weren’t funny, like when he pleasantly urged the technician to strangle me with the cord while they were installing my new phone.

I had just started my new job in November, and by December it felt like I had stories every day to bring home to John. At first we’d laugh together, but pretty soon John stopped laughing.

“You need to go to HR,” he said.

“Relax, I can handle it,” I said.

I’d learned, after all, that it takes two people for bullying to happen. I just had to stop being a target. When his jokes escalated, I stopped laughing or even saying “That’s not funny,” and affected indifference. When he rubbed my bra strap through my shirt, I started wearing only baggy clothes. I followed his instructions to the letter so he couldn’t criticize my work.

A few months later, when he made a rape joke, I put on my usual stone expression until I could get home and laugh it over with John. Or so I thought. John was furious—and at the time, I didn’t understand why. I thought he was angry at me. If Steve was saying sexual things to me at work, that had to mean I was sending signals that I was available and being unfaithful to John.

At John’s strong recommendation, I finally went to HR. Apparently, Steve had multiple complaints leveraged against him besides mine. He was let go in a week. I didn’t feel relieved though. I just felt like I’d failed. Even though I’d tried to do everything right in order to no longer be Steve’s target, none of it worked.

This happened four months ago and I’m finally coming to terms with this: none of this was my fault. And if you are being harassed in any way right now, NONE of it is your fault. You don’t need to change yourself because somebody else is being an asshole.

If somebody really wants to hurt you, it doesn’t matter if you take precautions. Saying harassment is 50% the victim’s fault is like partially blaming a rape victim. But it took me a long time to get to the point where I actually believe this is true.

If you’re reading this blog, you are awesome. You have some pretty sweet hobbies and interests, for example. Not everyone will like you, but that’s their loss. I don’t ever want you to be afraid to be yourself. And if somebody makes you feel that way, don’t waste time trying to change yourself the way I did. Talk to somebody who loves you. Talk to somebody higher up. Get help. Don’t let the bastards get you down.

Photo by Ryan Melaugh