These last couple of years have been tiring and stressful and definitely a right of passage into adulthood whether I liked it or not. It's when I gave up giving English classes as a freelance teacher and began my first 9 to 5 kind of job. Except 9 to 5 would have been a dream compared to what I was doing. As project manager at a translation agency in Madrid, I had to face several battles every day: a 2.5 hour commute to Madrid everyday plus the hour lunch break that ate up all my free time; a hysterical, illogical, rude, inflexible, impatient boss who doesn't understand how to use capital letters or punctuation marks; many long, irritating conversations with (Spanish) clients that insist that they speak English better than any native; the smelly, noisy, cantankerous people that would push, shove and step on me on public transportation.
Thankfully that period of my life has come to an end after a rather emotional, hysterical summer spent either screaming at my boss or avoiding her altogether.
Last Wednesday I embarked on a new adventure in my life as a freelance translator/proofreader working from home. Since my only connections are my old company (who's greedily internalizing all proofreading work) and other translators I've met along the way (who are also greedily holding on to as much work as possible), things have been really slow around my "office", i.e. my house.
I thought being couped up all day would drive me mad, but it hasn't. It has also just been a week and you might find me crawling up the walls in the near future. But for the moment a very new and unfamiliar peace has come over me. For the first time in months I'm sleeping like a log, eating home-made meals and doing exercise daily. I feel a lot more positive. Not about my future or anything in specific, it's just a lot easier to feel happy when you're not being pushed around any more. A lot easier to feel happy for other people too.
