December 2018 into January 2019
This piece gathers a small cluster of posts from the turn of 2019. They were less about a single event and more about a shift in attitude: work, writing, money, learning, and the need to stop giving time away too cheaply.
Time to re-evaluate
2019 was approaching, and with it came considerable uncertainty.
People I knew were burying their heads in the sand and saying things like, ‘It will all sort itself out. I don’t know why you let it bother you.’
Well, fuck that.
How can anyone sit back and watch the people running the country drive it into a brick wall at 100mph, then pretend it is all fine?
But the wider uncertainty also made me think about my own place in the world.
I had just turned fifty. That changes the way you look at time. Not in a dramatic, cinematic way. More like a slow tightening in the chest when you realise that the vague future you keep talking about has been waiting for you to do something with it.
So 2019 had to be different.
Not perfect.
Not miraculous.
Just different.
First, I wanted to resurrect The Rennsport Report and start writing about things that genuinely interested me, rather than waiting for someone else to tell me what had value.
That mattered.
For too long, I had treated my own interests as secondary. Something to fit around other people’s requests, half-promises, unpaid work, and the usual low-level chaos of trying to make money without a clear path.
The Rennsport Report felt like one route back to myself.
A place to write with purpose.
A place to think properly.
A place to stop asking for permission.
Opening up to learning
Around the same time, I decided to study for an Open Degree through the Open University.
Mostly, I wanted to study creative writing.
Part of me hoped it might help me forge some kind of writing career before I became too old to do anything useful with it. That sounds blunt, but that was how it felt.
I did not want writing to remain something I only used to process disappointment.
I wanted to get better.
I wanted structure.
Feedback.
Discipline.
A reason to take the work seriously.
There is a difference between writing because your head is full and writing because you are trying to build something.
I had done plenty of the first.
Now I wanted to attempt the second.
Promises for the year
For the previous couple of years, I had reached this point in the calendar and promised myself I would sort out the problems that kept holding me back.
Usually, the promises were too broad.
Sort my life out.
Get fit.
Make money.
Stop wasting time.
Be better.
All true, but not useful.
This time, I wanted the promises to be smaller and more practical. They were promises to myself alone. No grand public performance. No motivational nonsense.
Just a list.
Meditate daily.
Eat between 11.00 and 17.00.
Exercise for at least one hour a day, through walking or swimming.
Clear my debts.
Reduce unnecessary spending further.
Stop reading and watching so much news.
Read a book each week.
Stop using Twitter, while keeping the account open for future use.
Work hard.
Write every day.
Take more photographs.
Nurture friendships.
None of those things was new. Most had appeared before in one form or another. The difference was that I was beginning to see how connected they were.
Debt affected health.
The news affected the mood.
Social media affected attention.
Lack of movement affected confidence.
Poor routines affected writing.
Writing affected everything.
The problem was not one thing. It was the system I had allowed to form around me.
If 2019 was going to be better, that system had to change.
Freelance boundaries
There was another part of the reset, too.
Work.
More specifically, the work I would no longer do.
By then, I had spent too many years trying to be useful to people who did not value the time, effort, or skill involved. I had done favours and accepted low pay. Taken on fuzzy projects. Allowed scope creep and said yes when I should have said no.
That needed to stop.
So I made a list of things I would no longer do.
I would not promote someone’s product, service, tool, app, resource, guide, infographic, or ebook just because they asked nicely.
I would not write press releases.
I would not handle public relations.
I would not manage social media for someone else.
I would not write on spec.
I would not send free customised writing samples.
I would not work for little or no pay because it might bring exposure.
Exposure does not pay the rent.
I would not haggle over rates. I would give the rate. People could take it or leave it.
I would not provide endless free revisions after a project had been completed.
I would not rewrite someone else’s work for half my normal rate because it ‘just needs a little polish’.
I would not write, format, edit, promote, market, and distribute a piece of work while being paid only as the writer.
That is not writing.
That is content management.
And if someone needed both, they needed to pay for both.
It felt strange to write it down so plainly. Almost rude. But maybe that was the point.
For years, I had confused kindness with availability.
I had mistaken flexibility for weakness.
I had allowed other people’s vagueness to become my problem.
No more.
What I was really trying to protect
Looking back, this was not only about freelance work, study, money, or writing.
It was about protection.
Protecting time.
Protecting attention.
Protecting energy.
Protecting the small amount of confidence I had managed to rebuild.
Turning fifty had not magically changed me. It had not delivered wisdom overnight. But it had made certain things harder to ignore.
I could not keep waiting for someone else to hand me directions.
I could not keep giving away work and calling it an opportunity.
I could not keep confusing activity with progress.
I could not keep saying yes to people and no to myself.
So 2019 began with a quieter kind of resolution.
Write more.
Learn properly.
Spend less.
Move daily.
Protect the work.
Protect the family.
Protect the self.
That was enough to begin with.
Until next time,
adieu.