Groundhog Day 2022: My Car Got Repo’d. Then I Landed My First Client As A Freelance Writer.
I knew it was coming. How could I not? The lender had been calling almost daily for a good month and a half already. But no matter how much I had prepared myself for it, it felt like a gut punch this past Wednesday morning when I woke up to my suddenly-empty driveway.
The knots in my stomach twisted with renewed vigor. It was either the car or my health insurance, I reminded myself, in a sad attempt at re-framing.
Louie’s CAN’T-YOU-SEE-I’M-WASTING-AWAY-HERE?? meows managed to bring me back to the present. I had overslept again, and the fat f###er (term of endearment, I swear) and his brother were reminding me of my continued dereliction of cat lady duty. Breakfast was late again.
“Sorry, Boys,” I offered weakly. Another wave of nauseating reality washed over me, as I opened the door to the cat food cupboard.
The knots in my stomach twisted violently, this time with new twinges of guilt and shame. My mind was suddenly consumed by a dense fog of How will I?’s and Now what?’s. I didn’t even have enough money in the bank to qualify for free delivery on a cat food order from Walmart.
This is what you said you wanted, remember? You walked away from a regular paycheck for this. Remember saying that the stress of not knowing how you’d make rent or feed the cats just HAD to be better than the stress of being a public school teacher? Remember?
Somehow those reminders calmed me down a bit. I asked myself if I would do it all over again — walk away from a regular paycheck and benefits from a teaching career without the slightest financial safety net because I couldn’t endure another soul-sucking day of it — and the answer was an emphatic YES! before I could fully form the memory of how miserable I had been.
I was a 43-year-old widowed cat lady who didn’t have a car or a job, was behind a couple months on rent, and was now down to her last f’ing role of toilet paper.
Coffee now made (without Splenda, sadly) and morning routine done, I sat down at my computer for another long day of trolling freelance job boards, tweaking my writer portfolio website, and getting lost down online rabbit hole after rabbit hole of all the things I don’t know about freelance writing. I tried to focus, but given that my office window looks directly out to the driveway, all I could think about was the fact that I was a 43-year-old widowed cat lady who didn’t have a car or a job, was behind a couple months on rent, and was now down to her last f’ing role of toilet paper.
####, how the hell did I get here?
I looked down at my phone, seeing that it had lit up with an email notification from a guy about a possible job. Probably just a polite “We won’t be moving forward with your application” email.
I honestly couldn’t believe it. I danced around the apartment a bit, turned some music on, and let my mind finally revel in some good news for once. I allowed myself to daydream that afternoon, about the possibility that I might just be able to do this. That maybe someday I might be able to buy groceries again without checking my bank account first. (Or more immediately, that I just might be able to come up with the $1700 I need to scrape together by next week to get my car back.) It just felt so good to let my imagination run wild with the possibilities.
I printed out the email and taped it above my computer. I can do this.
It’s a few days later now, and you’ll be happy to know that no felines missed a meal in the creation of this post. There are now two cases of canned cat food in the cupboard again, thanks to delivery drivers and the deposit from my first client.
No new clients since then, but I’m staying positive as I prepare to hit the ground running again this week. And if anyone happens to be rolling in dough and wants to float $1700 my way to get my car back, well, I won’t say No, lol. But I’m intent on doing it myself. It’ll make for a much better story in the end.
To be continued.
