What My Kids Teach Me about Freelancing and Life in General

Forrester said in Finding Forrester, and I quote: “No thinking. That comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is to write, not to think!”

I may not be doing that line justice with this article, but yes, I always try to take a hint from Mr. Forrester.

Game? What game? 

At eight years old, my youngest son is fiercely competitive. He gets disappointed whenever his big brother beats him at games. One thing that bothers me is the crying bout that sometimes would ensue after a loss, for which I tell him:

“That’s how it always is with games. You win, the other loses. But losing isn’t always bad. When you lose, you learn things and find more reason to push yourself harder so you end up winning next time. That is, if winning is what you hope to achieve. Besides, games aren’t always about winning but how you play them and how the playing refines your character.”

Before you get any ideas and start thinking I deserve to be nominated for Parent of the Year (if there happens to be one in this side of town), let me tell you one thing I learned about parenting: A lot of times, it’s a reaction to what your kids say, do or don’t do.

A lot of times, I don’t even know if I’m saying the right things or doing what I have to be doing right. But I just give them my best shot, and at the end of the day, as long as I have my priorities (number one being the kids’ overall welfare) in order, I think I’m all good.

Aside from the melancholy that assaults me on rainy, flood-prone days when I have to be in the city braving the bad weather to get to work, this is one other reason why I think I have to be home with the kids more, which, in the overall scheme of things, is also why I have to really focus on getting to my end-of-2014 goal of working from home full-time.

Life is like a game of dominoes.

Because it’s a game, you have to learn how to play it to win it. And while you’re at it, enjoy the experience because even a game becomes dull and boring when you fail to derive joy and excitement from it.

The dumbest person in the room, eh?

I was doing my usual reading routine when a line from an article stood out to catch my attention:

“I’m always the dumbest person in the room, and I intend to keep it that way.”

These were the words of Lewis Howes in his Entrepreneur article entitled Entrepreneur Smarts: 30 Lessons I Learned in 30 Years.

Remember how in order to learn new things, some things you have to unlearn? And remember how in order to teach, you have to be a student? Just goes without saying, when you’re so full of yourself, you mess a lot of things up, right? And worst of all, you fail to learn the lessons that don’t come sashaying down the catwalk in super cool outfit, or expensive glossy wrapping paper that pleases the eyes.

If you want to learn things the way they should be learned, look in the eyes of a child whenever you tell him/her a bedtime story or answer silly questions like “Why does Granddaddy fart like a duck?” The rapt attention, the barrage of questions that follow thereafter, the giggles and pure delight – these are what make them great learners.

Goodbye and hello, little one?

Back when she was still very young, I had to leave the country to work. My daughter, then just over a year old, was left in the care of her father. When I came back almost a year later, she was eyeing me like I was some unwelcome stranger threatening to upend her little world.

In the days and months that followed, slowly but surely, I gained her trust. But it wasn’t easy, especially in the beginning when she would run away screaming for her Papa whenever I tried to get near her. Those were perhaps the worst days of my life, but they taught me that you get what you want only if you work hard to attain them.

Stop and enjoy the flowers

If you’re juggling your time between family, full-time work and freelancing, life becomes a blur of activities from point A to point B.

You rush, anxious to get to where you need to be on time that, more often than not, even when you’re with family, you struggle to refrain yourself from telling everyone else (especially the little ones who, out of curiosity, pause to look, smell or touch anything that catches their fancy) to hurry up.

And then, if you’re like me, you lament over the fact that as soon as you leave school, life, it seems, becomes an endless cycle of home, work, and some other place or two that you frequent. Well, lamenting isn’t going to change things much because that, unfortunately, is how things are in the grown-up world.

In a kid’s world (in my youngest’s world, at least), getting ready for school can mean asking about the solar system while eating a bowl of oatmeal, singing a tune while in the shower, and watching Disney Junior while figuring out whether his socks matched or not.

Kids, indeed! Let them light up our lives, shall we?

Image credit: Sura Nualpradid | FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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Maricel Rivera

Maricel Rivera is a freelance writer, editor, and marketing specialist. Her freelance writing career spans over ten years, starting out as a fiction writer in the early 2000s. She has already written on topics covering business software and online marketing.

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