“Lin An, are you the 101st person who doesn’t work?”
Editor’s note: This article comes from WeChat public account “Earth Soil Trough” (ID: xtutux6) , author Lin An.
Hello everyone, this is Lin An.
This article published today is an excerpt from a readme in my new book Work Only, Not Work .
In the past, many friends heard that after interviewing “100 people who are not at work”, they asked me invariably: “Are you the 101st person who is not at work?”
There are so many people asking and I want to sort out my story.
If everyone’s life will be written as an autobiography, the first turning point in my life should be called “freelance.”
What does work mean?
May 8, 2018 was the day I left my last company. After half a year of hesitation, I took the first step of freelance.
That year I was 26 years old. I worked as a content manager for a product line in the marketing department of an Internet company in Shanghai.
This may be a very suitable job for girls in the eyes of outsiders, But I was not happy that year.
In that year, the company’s philosophy changed during the development process. Colleagues with good relationships started leaving one by one.
During that time, I went to work every day in the company as if to mechanically complete a task that I had to do.
For a long time, I was like an indifferent machine, sitting in the office and counting time waiting for work.
“What is the meaning of work?” It was the year I asked the mostI asked the people around me again and again, the people I interviewed in the workplace, and myself, and the final answer was: “Work is for fun” .
Think about how we spend more than half of our time in addition to eating and sleeping every day. If life is unhappy, how bad our life will be.
How can I make myself happy? Change job? Seems not so simple.
I have been working in the workplace for four years. I have experienced the strenuous time of staying up all night with my team to catch up with the progress. I have also experienced the pace of work from idle to panic; I have also experienced how painful it is to work with people who are out of step.
Looking back at my career time, I find that I only feel happy when I work with people with similar interests and similar goals. The corporate culture formed by the people of a company and this group of people is the most important part of my job.
But there is a real problem: In the process of any company’s development and growth, the original team will inevitably be disbanded, and the corporate culture will inevitably change flavor. Because more people mean that your relationship with the company will also change.
Business often doesn’t talk about friendship or right or wrong. You always feel lost at some moments, and you feel that the boss has changed or the team has changed. This is the essence of business, and no company can escape it.
After seeing this clearly, I am a bit pessimistic.
I can switch to a company that I am temporarily satisfied with, but how long will this satisfaction last?
In a few years, once the company ’s development direction and the team I work with change I do not like, will I fall into the cycle of “meaningless work” and repeat it?
The work life from nine to five is like an infinite repeating endless cycle, and I want to escape from this cycle.
But what can you do without work? There was no answer in my mind at that time. Among the many possibilities, the only straw I could catch was called “freelance.”
A long time ago, I longed for freelance.
At that timeI just graduated one year ago and worked as a digital media marketing company in an advertising and public relations company in Beijing. The client’s work time is my working time, and the client’s rest time is the time for me to revise and modify the plan.
Extreme freedom of time makes me particularly eager for a job where I can arrange my own time.
Until one day, I discovered that I have always liked to record my life in words. I haven’t read a book, watched a movie, or written an article for a long time.
The spiritual self disappeared in the past, replaced by a writing machine facing the computer and carrying energy.
What’s even more ridiculous is that I work in a job that requires brain creativity, but I have no time to absorb the nutrients of creativity.
During that time, I often felt like I was a dry sponge, because I hadn’t seen the water for too long, it became dry and ugly-it was time to make a change.
By chance, I read an article by a professional film critic about my experience of leaving my stable job and doing what I love.
“There are still people in the world who can support themselves by doing what they like.” I set a goal in my heart: After three years, I became a freelancer By.
In the next few years, I have actually forgotten this goal in my busy work life. After all, for a new job seeker who needs to learn from different companies and increase knowledge, that goal It sounds too far away.
Three years later, the moment I decided to leave the last company, the idea of ”becoming a freelancer” came up again.
Interview with 100 people who don’t work
“Which of my skills can be turned into income to support myself?”
With this question, I started to search the freelance related articles and videos frequently. I opened the WeChat address book, and made a list of those friends who were not at work around me, and then scheduled the chat time one by one according to the familiarity.
In February 2018, I wrote an article after watching a show titled “How to Break When I Don’t Want to Work” in “Round Table” ” Today’s young people, why do not want to work “ .
I did not expect this article was accidentally posted on the homepage of Douban website. It was reprinted on more than 200 accounts on the WeChat public account, which caused a heated discussion among netizens.
I realized for the first time: There are so many people who do n’t want to go to work like me. They must also like me to know what those people who do n’t work depend on. Feed yourself.
At that time, no one was doing freelance interviews online.
“Then I might as well be a non-working person interview column? Not only can I know interesting non-working people from all walks of life, but I can also use their experience to prepare for my non-working plan.”
With this in mind, I soon published my first personal interview article.
That article interviewed one of my college classmates. After graduating from college, she only attended a few months of class. After that, she started a business with her boyfriend and opened several stores.
The first interview got a good attention after it was published on Douban . So I went all out and used the time after work to interview a few friends who didn’t go to work. I continued to update several interviews while the topic was hot.
Then “100 off-duty people” thisThis project, like a snowball, is getting bigger and bigger, more and more people know me through this project.
Gradually, some people started to find me and wanted to be interviewed. Some people came to me to talk about business cooperation. Some media and magazines asked me for an appointment. Some TV programs asked me if I wanted to share …
It can be said that “100 non-working people” brought me a large part of confidence and made me believe that I can support myself by writing and from the media after I resign.
But these two monetization methods don’t seem to be enough. After all, before the official resignation, the monthly unstable writing and self-media advertising income was far lower than my living expenses in Shanghai.
I need the same more stable monetization skills, and subsidize myself to continue to make non-profit interview plans when writing and media income is insignificant.
So I thought about the hobby of photography.
After graduating from college, I loved photography. In my spare time, I taught myself and practiced shooting portraits for the past 4 years. I have accumulated some works and got some affirmations among friends. I do n’t want to borrow to work Opportunity to verify that photography can bring me income.
Some of the works taken in the past
So, I started to organize my past portraits, posted them on some image social platforms, and referenced the marketing methods of other portrait photographers, and wrote a lot of portrait photography dry goods online.
In the beginning, it was difficult for a new photographer to get attention online, but because I insist on updating on different platforms, I often go to some popular attractions to take pictures and share photography experiences and dry goods. I finally wrote more than a month later Several high-profile posts have been published.
Photo: Lin An
Since then, every month, netizens have asked me to pay for an appointment through those few posts.
In the summer after I resigned in the impression, I either took photos outside of the house every day, or I took photos at home and wrote dry articles about photography, so I spent the most unstable period in the previous period.
Freelance Anxiety Period
Almost every freelancer talks about anxiety. As a freelancer who does not belong to any social enterprise and is not protected by most social systems, we have begun a “fight” with people since the day we left the company.
As an anxious person, in order to minimize my anxiety in the early days of freelance, I did as much preparation as possible before I resigned.
Material preparation is represented by saving money, and mental preparation is represented by continually envisioning the worst possible outcomes and thinking ahead about solutions.
Before I officially left my job, I had already deposited a deposit that “even if I didn’t make a penny, I would live in Shanghai for two years”. The purpose of this is not to want to be constrained by money and to forget your original intention of freelance.
And of all the terrible results I envisioned, the worst case is just a waste of months and still nothing, return to the workplace to find work-this result is still within my affordability Within range.
But in order to try my best not to get there, I set clear goals for myself: I earn enough money to maintain my basic living in the first three months, and the next three months Earn more than your salary at work.
This goal has its advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is that every time when I can’t find the meaning of freelance and I get lost for a short time, there is at least one profitable goal that guides me to continue.
The disadvantage is that how much money is made as a measure of the success of freelancing, it will take a lot of detours to make money, thus running counter to the really important goal.
In the first three months of freelance, I was like a tight string. I didn’t dare to rest for a moment. I closed my eyes every night. Various ideas of making money came out in my head. I couldn’t sleep at all. .
Working in a cafe
The hardest time was about July. I still remember that I didn’t make a penny in the past half of that month. Under the anxiety, I dare not go out to relax and stay at home every day to think of various ways to expand my income.
Because I have n’t seen people for a long time, my mentality has gone wrong: It is easy for emotional breakdown to fall into self-doubt.
I have lived for more than 20 years. For the first time, I feel that I have failed particularly. My strong self-esteem does not allow me to disclose this bad state to others, so I swallowed all the negative emotions by myself. .
Photography: Lin An
What impressed me most was that one night, I was chatting with friends from other places in the WeChat group, and forgot what I was talking about at that time, and I suddenly started crying for no reason, as if the mood had reached the extreme point of tears, tears If you don’t break out, you will get sick.
As I continued to chat with friends in irrelevant days while typing “hahaha” in the group, I couldn’t help crying-I still remember the uncomfortable feeling.
Fortunately, in the month of the worst mood, I never stopped doing things.
People They always say that when a person reaches a trough, every next step is uphill. I believed this sentence, and supported July with some strong willpower and conviction, and achieved a breakthrough in income in August-that month, my monthly income For the first time it exceeded the pay for work.
In August, I co-operated with an interviewee who was not at work to start a lecture writing online writing class. After nearly three months of preparations, the sales effect of the course and the evaluation of the students exceeded our expectations. This incident made me regain confidence in myself.
Since September, I have been updating on the Internet for several months, and my article has finally started to work:
Some media and companies have begun to ask me for a draft. In the following months, I have established long-term cooperation with several media platforms and Internet companies. The income has gradually stabilized due to draft fees and self-media. Anxiety My emotions are beginning to ease.
The most anxious time in the early days of freelance taught me a truth: A lot of anxieties are useless and useful. When you keep on doing something right, the opportunity comes naturally at a certain stage.
Not going to work does not mean not working
As the “100 non-working people” interview plan gets more and more attention on the Internet, more and more people ask me:
“I want to make money without work, how can I do it?”
“I really envy your freelancers, both free and easy.”
Gradually, I found that people have some misunderstandings about “freelance” and “not working”. They think “not working” is a wonderful thing. Freelance is really free.
I know the private message I received
I started to reflect on whether my interview article passed incorrect values, which made people mistakenly think that “out of work is easier” or “out of work is an easy thing”.
At that time, I realized the significance of the interview plan of “100 off-workers”, and it should not be limited to “share the successful life of others without work”. Instead, it should be “helping those who can afford to take the first step out of work”, and at the same time let those who have unrealistic fantasies about not being at work recognize the reality and continue to grow old Go to work honestly.
I’m afraid someone told me: “Lin An, I resigned after reading your article. What should I do next?” A person who doesn’t go to work should know how to make a living. As a result, I adjusted my writing thinking from August. In addition to interviewing successful freelancers, I also interviewed some failed cases and emphasized the protagonist in those success stories. The difficulties encountered, and what theyThe cost of freelance.
The first interview “failed” Freelancers
This is to tell everyone that “not going to work does not mean not working”, “there is no absolute easy way to go in this world”, “to succeed, you must first go through hardships.”
In my opinion, It is never a wise decision to choose naked words to avoid work.
After interviewing dozens of people who are not working, I found that most people who are capable of not working are not deserters in the workplace.
On the contrary, they are also very good people in the workplace. Rather than obeying instructions to work for others in a company, they want to do things for themselves according to their own ideas. They don’t go to work because they can’t fully exert their abilities and talents in the workplace, not to avoid work and choose a more easy way.
Photo: Lin An
This year when I’m not at work, I often lament. “Compared to freelance, it’s easier to go to work.”
When you go to work, you still get paid for mixed days. The progress of work is guided by the boss and colleagues. If there is no goal, it is good to refer to the promotion path of other people. Share.
What about freelance?
If you do n’t work every day, there will be no income;
Without outside constraints, you have to fight against your own delay and laziness every day;
There is no life template or promotion path to follow. You must explore by yourself at each step; you make a mistake when you smash your own signboard, and the consequences are completely at your own expense …
So after going out of work for more than a year, I find that I am more passionate about work than at work, because I do what I like, so I wo n’t complain if I work for a long time, and naturally I do n’t say overtime. I also have a stronger sense and control of time. The control of life seems to be pulled back from one’s hand a little bit.
Photo: Lin An
And these changes are all my self-salvation on the verge of collapse.
This process is no easier than going to work, but I see everything I am worth when I see myself transformed.
An interviewee once said “Everyone who survives freelance will become more confident” , I agree with this .
Compared to a year ago, now I am more confident, more free, and face some difficulties in life, and no longer easily anxious.
I have insisted on doing such a difficult job as freelance. What else can I not overcome?
Freelance, in a way, opened my second life.
Photo: Lin An
But I still don’t recommend people to resign easily and take the “no work” path.
Although the domestic freelance community is slowly expanding, more and more people predict that it may be a future job trend, but it is like some jobs are not suitable for everyone, The “out of work” lifestyle is not universal for everyone.
I’ve seen too many people who are undisciplined, can’t overcome the loneliness of being at work, and lose their direction.After a period of non-work, try to fall back or return to the workplace. So I hope that everyone who wants to work as a freelancer, before thinking of impulse resigning, think about the following three questions:
Am I leaving to avoid work or to do what I really like?
My current deposit can support me for a long time without income?
What will I do to support myself after no one pays me?
I hope that in the future, everyone can do what they like in the way they like.
No one complains about work anymore, because it has become a happy thing.
-Text / Typography: Lin An- -Cooperation WeChat: xtutux3–Submission email: xtutux@126.com-