Every time I talk to someone who only sees me on Facebook, they say some variation of the same thing: “Your life looks amazing! I can tell your business is going really well!” Both of these things are true, but I recently realized that, just like many people, I “curate” my Facebook updates to show the sunny side of the street. Here are a few status updates that make things look a little less rosy…
- Beautiful sunny day. Here I am writing a questionnaire about hemorrhoids.
- I had seventeen meetings last month and none of them led to work.
- A client yelled at me this morning.
- Dispatch from the Dominican Republic: There’s a music festival in town. I had to take a client call in the bathroom (quietest place I could find).
- It’s Easter Sunday and my client has a crisis I have to deal with.
- I outsourced some data entry to a fellow freelancer and she went MIA. I stayed up all night doing it myself.
- A project I was counting on fell through.
- I still haven’t been paid for a gig I did 3 months ago.
- I woke up at 4AM in Atlanta, flew to LA, and moderated three back to back focus groups. I’ve now been awake for 21 hours.
- Putting the loca in location independent: Traveling in the Dominican Republic and there’s no wi-fi in the town we wanted to visit. Had to backtrack three hours to a different town and hole up in a too-expensive hotel to meet deadlines.
- I spent six hours on conference calls today.
- Client lost my invoice. Oops.
- Writing a report. Happy birthday to me.
- It’s tax day. Don’t even talk to me.
So yes, my life and work are wonderful, but even wonderful has off days. Don’t believe everything you see on Facebook.
