This is my Liberation Anniversary. Sixteen years ago today, I was laid off from my last “real” job. I’ve worked for myself ever since, which is longer than the time I’ve spent working for someone else.

Looking back on the time, I had very mixed feelings then. I was unhappy at work, so unhappy that a week or so earlier I found myself hoping that I’d have a miraculous, magical job offer in my e-mail (the first spark of the idea that became Enchanted, Inc.). I was actually just working part-time — 30 hours a week — and telecommuting, which had been an ideal situation for trying to fit in my writing, but after the bosses who made that possible left and after quite a bit of turmoil in the company, my job had become a lot less fun. My new supervisor seemed to see me as a threat, shutting me out of things. Her shutting me out of a major client meeting resulted in us losing that client, which was what led to me being laid off (that client then hired me as a freelancer). I was already planning to maybe take the plunge and quit my job to freelance, but later in the year when I’d had a chance to get things like insurance lined up. Since I knew we were losing that account, I already suspected what was going on and had already pulled all my files off my office laptop so I’d have work samples. I wasn’t surprised when I got the call to bring my computer and all company property to the office, that that didn’t ease the sting of the way they went about it.

But by about noon that day, I was suddenly unemployed. I’d already planned a reading binge that weekend, starting on Friday (my 30 hours a week were flexible, which meant if I worked a full day Monday through Thursday, I could take Friday off). I’d just started reading the Harry Potter series the previous fall, and had read the first three books, the ones I’d bought in England. The fourth book was only out in hardcover at the time, and my library hold for it had finally come in. I was planning to devote the weekend to reading it. I had the soundtrack for the first movie and appropriate snacks ready to go. But since I suddenly didn’t have to work, I moved my reading marathon up a day.

It proved nicely cathartic. The events toward the end of that book made me sob hysterically, and I think I needed a good cry. I’d been so numb up to that point, so determined to look on the bright side, but there were a lot of hurt feelings from the way I’d been treated. That book also helped with the ongoing development of that idea I’d had about a magical job. I so related to what was going on with Hermione in that book because it was much like my school experience, with the guys I hung out with as friends not even thinking of me as someone they might invite to a big dance because they didn’t think of me as a girl (unfortunately, I didn’t have the star jock from another school to swoop in and ask me). That made me think that I would love to read something like these books, but about adult life, with jobs, friends, etc.

I was putting off actually dealing with thinking about what to do next. I figured I’d get through the weekend and then think. But my former clients who’d heard the news started calling me the next day, offering some freelance work (one benefit of working from home: my clients all had my home number). I’d saved up a lot of money in preparing to someday make the leap, and I decided to wait before trying to get a new job to see if I could get by as a freelancer so I could focus on my fiction writing. That was a bit risky, as I was in the middle of a huge career lull as a novelist, but I had other forms of income and several years worth of living expenses saved up, so I thought it was worth a try.

I still haven’t gone in search of a new regular job. I’m not sure I could find one right now, given that it’s been so long. I wouldn’t want to go back to what I was doing, but I don’t know what else I could do. I guess that means I’d better keep making the writing work.

It’s the time of year when invitations for fall events start coming in, and it’s something I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, it’s so flattering to be invited to speak at book festivals and conventions. That makes me feel validated and loved. On the other hand, January is a bad time for me to be invited anywhere.

I’ve joked that I’m part bear because I seriously go into hibernation in the winter. I could happily go weeks without human interaction. I come up with excuses not to leave the house. I tend to go into “live out of the freezer” mode, so I don’t even need to go grocery shopping that often (fortunately, fall is the season when I go on cooking sprees, so the freezer is full of soups, stews, sauces, etc. that I just have to defrost). Any invitation I receive in January is automatically less tempting because all I can think is that I’d have to leave the house and be around people.

Once I get over that, I have to really think about what invitations to accept. For the most part, authors have to pay their own way to things like book festivals and conventions. You’re probably not going to sell enough books to cover the travel expenses, so you have to consider other things like the amount of exposure and possible media coverage you might get, what the networking opportunities might be, etc. And, flat out, will it be a fun trip? Is it to a place you’ve wanted to visit? Are there people you might see or meet there? Who will the other authors be?

And then I generally have to get over the “but I’d have to leave the house and be around people” thing again, reminding myself that I may not feel this way later in the year.

But for now, I’m working from inside my blanket fort.

Like most people with Monday-Friday “normal” type jobs, I used to really hate Mondays — back to the grind of getting up, facing a dreadful commute, and spending the day in the office after I’d had a blissful two days of doing my own thing.

Now, though, I actually really like Mondays. It helps that I’m doing something I love, that I’m doing it at home with no commute, and I work for myself, so I set my own schedule. I let myself get a slow start on Mondays, if I want to. Weekends are often busy for me, and especially Sundays, so Monday is generally my “sleep in” day. I linger over the newspaper and a cup of tea before launching into my week, which is so much more civilized than being forced to go to work at the usual time right after a weekend. Monday is usually a day for staying at home and not dealing with people.

But I also love the sense of a fresh start that Mondays give me. It’s like a New Year’s Day every week. If I slacked off or didn’t accomplish what I wanted last week, that’s all in the past and I can make new resolutions for the new week. I can accomplish all the things, eat right, exercise, and make progress on organizing my house. I can spend time writing, get projects completed, and all those other things I really want to do. I can set up new schedules and guidelines for myself (you sometimes have to resort to tricks like this when you don’t have a boss or a strict deadline, and therefore there’s nothing to stop you from spending the day reading message boards about TV shows you don’t even watch if you don’t set up some kind of structure).

So, I’m starting today with a lot of enthusiasm, with maybe a dash of fear because I woke up this morning from the recurring “back to my old day job” nightmare. That one seems to have taken over from the “I’m running late for the final exam in the class I forgot I was taking and never actually went to, and I don’t know for sure where the exam is being held” nightmare that was my brain’s previous favorite. It’s never actually really any of my old day jobs, but it’s one like one of them, or it may be one of my old jobs in the dream, and it’s only upon waking that I realize I never actually worked at that place. The bizarre detail from this particular dream was that my boss had come into my office to talk about something, a call for her (not an actual person I’ve ever worked for — I think it might actually have been Mimi from the Enchanted, Inc. books) got forwarded to my desk, and I got out of the way so she could take it. It wasn’t just a quick answer to something, and it looked like she was settling in for a long chat, so when she sat down at my desk, I slipped out of the office to give her some privacy, only then remembering that I’d taken off my shoes while I was sitting at my desk, so now I was barefoot. When my boss finally got off the phone and left my office, she criticized me for not being at my desk, working, and asked why I wasn’t wearing shoes. Which sounds like something Mimi would do.

And now I kind of want to see if I could pull off a short story from Mimi’s perspective, where she’s running into magic but doesn’t realize it as she continues being an irrational boss.

And I really, really don’t want to have to go back to working for the kind of people who inspired Mimi, so I guess I’d better start writing.

We started children’s choir last night, and it’s a good thing my co-teacher is a Boy Whisperer because they were particularly rowdy. One kid got sent to the corner several times (first for throwing things at other people, then for leaving the corner and trying to sneak out of the room) and had the “do we need to go find your mother?” threat after he stuck his nametag on one of the posters, covering up one of the essential parts (and it wasn’t the kind of nametag sticker that comes off easily). Meanwhile, one of the other kids came in early while I was trying to clean some marker off the floor (I don’t think we were responsible, but I figure we’d get blamed), became obsessed, wanted to help, then took over. Which was fine for a while, but he wouldn’t stop, no matter what else we were doing, and he got possessive about it, so fights were breaking out over cleaning the floor.

Small amounts of music ended up happening in between all this. The funny thing was, I started teaching them about notes and showed them sheet music, and they were fascinated by it. They spend so much time and energy trying to avoid doing any of the class stuff, but when we finally do it, they love it.

Hmm, that sounds like me and my writing schedule. I spend so much time and energy putting off actually getting to work, but once I’m working, I enjoy what I’m doing.

Tomorrow and Saturday I’m going to a music leaders workshop, so maybe I’ll come away with some new ideas to try with the choir. And maybe me.

But being out for a day means I need to get a lot done today. I need to finish writing a scene, write another scene, write two synopses, condense three synopses into two-page “blurbs,” then polish all of it. I won’t finish today, but I may get to the point where I can do the editing and polishing on Monday.

And then it’s back to the books I’ve been working on.

On Writer Twitter, the topic of Imposter Syndrome comes up frequently. That’s when you feel like whatever success you may have had is merely a fluke, and someone is going to notice it. It’s when you feel like you’re not a “real” writer, for whatever reason — not selling, not selling enough, not being well known, not getting award nominations, not being invited to book festivals. I’ve been surprised by how many people I think of as far ahead of me confessed to feeling this way.

The thing is, I’m not sure anyone really gets over this, unless they’ve got a huge ego (that’s not just a front). I would guess that the people who don’t ever feel like they might be exposed as an imposter are those who are the real imposters. Self-doubt does have its uses. It can keep us from feeling complacent and pushes us to keep doing better. When I start to fear that whatever I’ve achieved is a fluke and feel like a nobody, that’s when I buckle down and write more and am hard on myself to make what I write the best it can be. You don’t want to take it so far, though, that you hold yourself back from opportunities out of fear that you won’t be worthy, and you definitely don’t want to take it so far that you give up and quit because you’re sure you’ll never be a “real” writer.

The trick to dealing with all of this is to think about your own definitions of success. Don’t look at what success means to other people. What does it look like to you? What really matters? What are you trying to get out of this career? Would you trade what you have for what you see other people having?

I had my wake-up call about that when I was at the Nebula Awards conference last year. What often makes me feel like an imposter is the fact that I seem to be a relative unknown in my field, in spite of the years I’ve been publishing, the number of books I’ve had published, the amount of money I’ve made. I was on a panel about dealing with discouragement, and I brought this up as one of my discouragements. I had the audience raise their hands if they’d heard of me, and only a couple of hands went up. But on another panel about finances for freelancers, I was with people I consider far more successful than I am. They’re authors the audience had heard of, people who get award nominations, who have thousands of Twitter followers. And yet they were talking about running through their emergency funds, having to take part-time jobs to supplement their writing income, doing various kinds of crowdfunding. I might be obscure, but I’ve always been fairly financially secure as a full-time writer. I own a home, have no debts other than the mortgage (that I’ll probably pay off soon), and have a big enough financial cushion that I don’t have serious worries as long as I manage my money wisely. That was when I realized that while I’d love to be recognized and acknowledged, I much prefer making decent money. Of course, if I’m already making decent money, then being better known should mean I’d make even more money, but I wouldn’t trade the income for the renown.

Meanwhile, it’s entirely possible that the other people on that panel were feeling like imposters because they weren’t living entirely off their writing income without having any financial woes. Or they may be okay with where they are because they’re getting what they want.

Back in my day job years, I was at a conference for people in my field (university communications/public information officers), and the speaker suggested keeping a “fuzzy file.” In that job, you get a lot of criticism and are often caught in the middle — the administration always wants more and better results, the faculty just wants to be left alone and not bothered with press inquiries, unless they want more attention but don’t have anything likely to get attention, the press want sources for their stories but don’t want to be pitched things they aren’t interested in. You can’t make everyone happy. So it’s important to hang on to any bit of praise. Keep a file of thank-you notes, press clippings, positive feedback, etc., to look at when you’re feeling battered. Writers should keep their own fuzzy files of good reviews, acceptance letters, good royalty statements, award nominations, screen caps of high Amazon rankings, etc. Write a list of your accomplishments. When Imposter Syndrome kicks in, you can look at your fuzzy file and remind yourself that you deserve what you’ve achieved. Then use that nagging sense of dissatisfaction as motivation to go above and beyond.

This year, I’m really trying to treat workdays like workdays. One of the dangers/pleasures of working for myself at home is that I’m totally in charge of my own time. If I want to spend the day reading or watching TV, I can. If I want to take the afternoon off and go to a movie or on a hike, I can. I can spend all day on Facebook or message boards. But then I don’t get any writing done. Even on good writing days, just taking a little break to check e-mail can end up with me blinking out of a fog an hour later. The thing is, I seldom do intentionally take a day off. I consider it a work day, then get sidetracked by other things that aren’t really fun but that aren’t work.

So my aim this year is to be intentional about how I use my time. I’m setting timers for activities that tend to have me blinking out of a fog an hour later, and I’m trying to spend as much time on work-related tasks as I would if I had a full-time job. That still gives me more free time than if I were working in an office because I don’t have to commute and I don’t have to deal with all the “office” stuff that isn’t work but that eats time. The last couple of years I had a “real” job, I was telecommuting and working part-time, but I realized I actually got more work done because so much time in the office was wasted. I’ll still allow myself the flexibility to take time to do fun things and enjoy the flexibility I have, but I want it to be on purpose, not time lost in a “I was just checking my e-mail, wow, what time is it now?” haze. Plus, if I really treat weekdays as work days, then weekends will be more meaningful.

Yesterday I was pretty good about getting a full day’s work in. I’m putting together some proposals for a potential opportunity, and I had a new idea for one, developed an old idea that’s been looking for a home, and figured out how another old idea might be repurposed to work for this. Then I re-read what I’ve written on a project in progress so I can start moving forward. Meanwhile, I did some promo work.

It helps that it was too cold to be up and around much, so I wasn’t distracted by housework or organizing projects. But I also cut off the TV and Internet early and read, finishing my first book of the year. I’ll be losing my cable service as part of my homeowners association fees early this year, and I’m considering scrapping it entirely, just getting an antenna, so I can cut back on my TV watching. I can get plenty of DVDs from my library, and the library also gives access to a few streaming services for TV shows, movies, documentaries, etc. Then I can watch what I plan to watch rather than mindlessly flipping through channels for background noise.

Now to go play some more with those new ideas and see if I can develop them into anything.

I read a lot of books about things like productivity and time management, mostly because I have no adult supervision, so I need all the help I can get. I’m my own boss, so there’s no one monitoring when I go to work, what I do during the workday, when I stop work, or how productive I am. I have even less structure when I’m writing for independent publication and there’s no publisher deadline. That means I need to figure out ways to keep myself honest and make the most of my time. There’s also an element of fascination and curiosity. I love psychology and figuring myself (and other people) out. My life makes for a good experimental environment because I have total control over just about everything. I decide when to sleep and wake up, when and what to eat, when and how to work. That allows me to try the various advice I read about in a way that I couldn’t if I had to worry about a job, spouse, kids, or even pets.

My latest read was a book called Willpower, by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney. It’s all about how willpower works and how to use it. They cite the now-famous study in which preschoolers were given a marshmallow and told that if they didn’t eat it before the researcher returned to the room, they’d get another marshmallow. They were studying self-control in children, but then later followed up with the kids when the daughter of one of the researchers, who’d been part of the preschool class used as a study group, mentioned running into her former classmates in college. They were curious to see what became of the kids, and it turned out that the greatest predictor of future success wasn’t intelligence or even socioeconomic background. The kids who held out for the second marshmallow were overwhelmingly more successful — better grades, went further in school, got better jobs, were better liked — than the kids who ate the marshmallow. The kids who ate the marshmallow were more likely to have dropped out of school or gone to prison. This held true even when they adjusted for race and class. I guess I’m interested in this kind of thing because I was the sort of kid who not only would have held out for the second marshmallow, but I’d have then held onto both marshmallows, saving them for some future special occasion. I would say that I’m not particularly successful, but then again, I am making a living in a career where most people who try it don’t end up making a living, so maybe we’re grading on a curve.

Anyway, the book offered a few takeaways that I found interesting and potentially useful for people who are trying to manage their lives more effectively. One key thing about willpower/self-control is that it’s essentially a decision — you’re deciding to take one action (usually a less immediately pleasant one) over another action (usually one with short-term benefits). It functions in the brain like any other decision you make — what to wear, what to do, what to buy, etc. We only have a limited amount of stamina for decisions, and once it’s depleted, it’s difficult to make decisions at all. By the end of any decision-making process, we’re likely to just not care and go with whatever the default is, and there’s lower willpower after that. Because of this effect, if you’re trying to change something in your life that takes willpower to do, it’s more effective to focus on one thing. You don’t have the stamina to make that many decisions on an ongoing basis. That’s why New Year’s resolutions usually fail: that long list of things you’re going to improve requires more willpower than you’ve got. You’re better off picking one thing and focusing on that.

The cool thing is that once you focus on that one thing, other things tend to fall into place without you really trying. They found in a study that when participants worked on one change in their lives from any category (physical fitness, financial planning, study habits), they also ended up eating better, smoking and drinking less, exercising more (even when physical fitness wasn’t the thing they were working on), and generally getting their lives in order without making any conscious effort to do those things. I’ve found that this summer. Because I’m rehabbing my bad knee and am in physical therapy, I have to exercise daily. I’m highly motivated to do this because I’ve been in pain and not able to do things, so I want to get better and know that doing my exercises will help. There’s also a financial motivation, as my medical bills will be lower the sooner I’m released from therapy, and doing the exercises daily will make me get well faster. And I’m getting monitored on my progress by the physical therapist, so I’m held accountable. That has made it relatively easy for me to make myself exercise every day. I’ve found that the rest of my life has fallen into place. I’m going to bed earlier and getting up earlier, feeling well-rested. I’m eating better. I’m doing a lot more writing. I’m making progress on organizing my house.

The other helpful thing is that after you do a behavior that requires willpower for a month or so, it becomes a habit, and doing it regularly no longer requires willpower. Then you can move on to some other thing you want to focus on. So, instead of making a list of resolutions, pick one thing to focus on. When that becomes a habit, move on to the next thing.

Accountability and monitoring really help in sticking to something. For writers, they suggest keeping track of the number of words written and amount of time spent writing (which I do). Planning also helps because it separates the decision from the action, which means it takes less willpower. I’ve found that to be very effective for me. I make a schedule for my day in the morning, and I find it’s a lot easier to say “it’s time to clean house” or “it’s time to write” because it’s in my schedule than it is to have a big open amount of time and then have to decide how to fill it when I’m in the moment, especially later in the day, when I’m tired. One fine tuning I’ve made to my schedule this week is to schedule my breaks. I used to just block off afternoons for writing, but I found that when I took a break during that time, it was sometimes hard to get back to work. So, instead of just blocking off the afternoon, I block off distinct writing sessions with distinct breaks, and I even plan what the main activity for each break will be. Then it’s a lot easier to get back to work. I’m not deciding it’s time to get back because the decision has already been made.

Anything you can do in advance to make the decision less taxing can help. If you’re dieting, don’t have tempting food in the house and you don’t have to decide not to eat it. Measure out portions ahead of time so you don’t have to decide how to eat or when to stop eating. Lay out your exercise clothes ahead of time so you don’t get sidetracked by deciding which t-shirt and shorts to wear. That’s something else I’ve been doing, scheduling time to set up my writing area. That way, all those little procrastination behaviors don’t happen during the designated writing time. The glass of water, computer, notebooks, etc., are all already there when it’s time to get to work. It used to be that the first half hour of my writing block was filled with the equivalent of the toddler demanding a story, a glass of water, and a closet monster inspection to delay bedtime. Now I have that block scheduled for preparation, and I find that I’m actually starting writing sooner.

It’s interesting reading if you want to work on managing your life, and might even be good character fodder.