“In most cases being a good boss means hiring talented people and then getting out of their way.”
— Tina Fey
For 2019, I’m trying something new: I’m searching for bosses.
2018 was a year of intense reflection, and reorganization.
I took baby steps to try to fund my online work directly (instead of how I’d been doing it before, by speaking & performing – from “behind the curtain”. I wrote about that on It’s Pronounced Metrosexual, for example, and made a pretty infographic to go along with the article.
We took a similar baby step at The Safe Zone Project last summer, with our online courses – allowing students to pay tuition if they chose, and that’s been almost self-sustaining. The vast majority of learners opt for the full scholarship, but the few who pay cover the costs for the rest.
Now, with those baby steps taken, I’m upgrading to giant scary over-the-cliff leap: trying to fund the work I do online – all of it – directly.
It’s all explained on the site linked above (https://bemyboss.es), and I get at the gist in this video.
I don’t know if it will be successful.
I’m not sure if I’ll be able to fund my work directly.
I’m hopeful, though.
In any case, this experiment is not going to dramatically change how I work, or what I create: I’m going to keep making free online resources, educating about sexuality and gender and social justice, and doing my best to nudge us toward global justice.
But if it’s successful, it’s likely to change how it feels, for me, to be doing the work. From apples to oranges. Apples of insecurity, isolation, misunderstanding, and loneliness. To oranges of not those things.
I’ve worked for myself longer than I’ve ever worked for someone else. And I’ve never worked for a community of someone elses. So who knows if I’ll prefer the oranges.
But, then again, nobody is really self-employed.
Time to give oranges a taste,
<3 sK
🎧 : Listening To
🐶 : Snuggling With