At 7 o'clock in the morning, I was woken up by someone knocking on the door. I opened my eyes and for a moment, I didn't know where I was. The first thing I saw was my desk, which was filled with TV scripts and revised script pages in every color—pink, green, yellow, rainbow. Then I remembered I was still "working" and sleeping on the couch again. The thing is, I had just finished a 16 hour day at around 3am and I would have been driving home, but the commute was an hour, which meant three hours of sleep or less. So my office couch wins. There was another knock on the door. "Ready?" they said. "We have more script changes that need to be communicated to the actors..." I opened the desk drawer that doubled as a dresser drawer, put on a new shirt, and opened the door.
Yes, I need some help with my work-life balance. As a script coordinator for a TV series, I'm the last person to get a script before it's emailed to 100 to 200 people, from actors and directors to set designers and the props department. And, don't get me wrong - working in television is a lot of fun, especially if you love the adrenaline rush of last-minute changes, if you're good at multitasking, if you like spending 12+ hours on Time spent with colleagues becomes one big happy family.
Sure, I didn’t get enough sleep, but I loved all of this stuff. But when my grandma once asked me how my work-life balance was when I was working 16 hours a day, I started crying. TV shows have always been my life, so meeting up with friends (let alone dating) is often a challenge; I seem like the one who always gets away with it. The idea of work-life balance was ingrained in my mind by my grandmother who always said, “It’s your life, but you also need time to live it. Remember: it will fly by.” . "Take it from me."
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Being a full-time remote journalist has improved my work-life balance—something I never planned on doing. It all started by accident when my grandmother who raised me had ongoing health issues in Chicago - I wanted a way to get there while also working in a field I loved. And, this is not a random career choice. Growing up, I always thought I would be a journalist, but I missed that dream over the years—I majored in journalism in college and started writing as a kid; Start writing; I studied journalism in college and started writing as a kid. When I was nine years old, I even had a "newspaper," Nat's Neat New Notes , that my grandma would mail to my family and family friends. I'll write about everything from my hamster's new nest to Baskin-Robbins' new ice cream flavor. I wrote throughout my childhood, high school, college, and post-college, but when I entered graduate school for screenwriting, I moved to Los Angeles to focus more on film and television work.
But while I was working in television production in Los Angeles, I often moonlighted writing and editing everything from articles to personal essays. When you work on a TV show, you work on it for months, months, or almost a year at a time, all depending on how many episodes the network ordered: 6, 12, 22, etc. In between, I would find temporary jobs in TV studios because I preferred them (keeping busy, socializing, networking, etc.) to collecting unemployment.
Working in television also gives me more flexibility when it comes to visiting my grandmother. In between jobs, I would often fly back to Chicago to visit her, for a month here or a month there. And, when her health took a turn for the worse around 2011, and she started being transferred to hospitals all over Chicago, I found myself leaving TV and temp work before it was over, instead seeing her at her hospital bedside she. Eventually, in 2015, a month-long visit turned into a year and a half until her death.
During that year and a half, I went to Chicago with a part-time remote. I worked in journalism, worked 12 hours a week, lived in hotels and sublet on a monthly basis, because sleeping in my grandma's hospital room wasn't an option. A viable long-term option. If you know anything about freelance writing, you generally can't live off 12 hours a week. I literally looked up and begged the universe for two more remote writing jobs so I could afford to live in Chicago, close to my grandma. I always said I would move back for her - and I thought, now is the time. And, my performance worked. Within a few months, I had two relatively stable writing jobs; they both found my writing portfolio online. I know it sounds contrived – looking to the sky and asking for two more jobs, but it worked, and I also marketed elsewhere for more writing and editing assignments.
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That month in Chicago seemed to turn into a year and a half overnight. I rarely left my grandmother's side—she died when I briefly returned to Los Angeles and eventually got out of my apartment there. In addition to being overwhelmed, I couldn't help but feel there was some divine intervention at work - my grandmother never liked the fast-paced lifestyle, and getting rid of the only thing that still bound me - my apartment in Los Angeles - seemed Like a sign.
She was a frequent traveler herself and always encouraged me to live abroad. Now, with my remote job, I can actually do that. After she died, I couldn't stand the sound of ambulance sirens around me and wanted to get as far away from them as possible. Randomly, in a Facebook group, I saw a Swiss woman who needed a "digital nomad" to look after her goats for a few months. I applied immediately. A few days later, I was living in a quiet, remote spot in the Swiss Alps, where I couldn't hear the ambulance sirens. It's perfect.
However, goats and I weren't a good match - one goat liked to ram its horns into my thighs, turning my legs purple. Since it was the middle of winter, my carpal tunnel was so bad from shoveling that it became a pain to do my main job - my handwriting. Twelve days later I decided to move on.
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Although caring for goats was much different than I expected, grief and goats ended up being the catalysts for my digital nomad lifestyle. When I realized I didn't need to take care of goats to travel and work remotely, I explored more of Switzerland and decided to explore a new country every month or so. I've snowshoeed in the Swiss Alps and found the smallest, quaintest church in the middle of nowhere; I've fed kangaroos and wallabies in Australia; I've eaten churros in Madrid and it's not sweet, but they're Indeed” dipped in a cup of less sweet chocolate, I found I preferred the Americanized version of the churros; there was more.
I work a lot in New York, where I work. When "living" in an Eastern European country like Poland, they are six hours ahead of New York, which means I can go exploring castles, kayaking, or snowshoeing all day long and then have my laptop by 6 p.m. (my laptop). time) to work on my American job.
After working remotely, I no longer rely on my phone and laptop 24/7 like before. Of course, I email my editor promptly, but no one is upset if I don't text back in the middle of the night (and they don't text me in the middle of the night), and I only work on weekends if I want to. When I first started working remotely, I was used to being on call at all times, so it took some getting used to - for example, I could go somewhere without my laptop when I wasn't working, Out of fear that my boss will call or email me without prior notice.
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However, there are some key traits you definitely need to master in order to be successful at remote work: discipline, drive, drive, and don’t let the “life” part of your work-life balance take over because you still need to work so you can Make money to do the “life” part. Some remote workers work from home in their pajamas, but I find it's best to get up, get dressed, and leave the house just as I would if I were going to the office. Of course, I sometimes work from my current home (even the hotel bathroom, because that’s the only place I can get a WiFi signal!), which is definitely a good option, but I thrive in crowds and noise Being around me, even if it means a quiet co-working space in a library; they help me hold myself accountable.
It wasn’t until I started working remotely that I realized how important it was to maintain a good work-life balance; my grandma was right—it’s important to make time for the “life” part, too.
