When you’re an independent contractor, whether doing entertainment, a skilled trade, consulting, or anything else – every day is a hustle. For The Rock Father™, that aspect of being a parent (and rock n’ roll gangster) can be terrifying. What that means is that I have no set income. Some months I make decent money, while other months I make no money – zip, zilch, zero. Sure, my wife has a ”normal” gig so I can work-from-home and raise our daughter, but I keep going – working into the wee hours every night, and sacrificing 95% of ”me” time in order to keep things rockin’.
In the pre-parent days, I could do an acting project like this one and be set for nearly a year (if I wanted to), but even then – those projects were few and far between, while requiring tons of time, travel, gas money, and rejection to land (at some point I’ll write a blog about why I quit acting). While a lot has changed in the past 2½ years, one odd thing is that I stopped seeing ”money” or the amount of ”hours” worked as pieces of my professional life. In their place, I started seeing every project quantified by the amount of diapers I’d be able to purchase.
Yesterday, I hit the local SAMS CLUB for diapers, wipes, paper towels, toilet paper, and paper plates. As usual, it was impossible to leave without spending $100 ($96.43 to be exact), and that was all we bought.
A 90-count box of 2T-3T HUGGIES PULL-UPS is $30. Since I do a lot of “small” jobs now (writing, video editing, etc), in my head I see $200 as 6.66 boxes of diapers (based on current size, brand, and store). In fact, I visualize them stacking up like a little bar graph. Is this weird?
In a few short months, I expect my visualization to shift from diapers to formula, as we do have another “new release” on the way.
Hopefully I won’t start quoting jobs in number of boxes or cans.
Then again, the value of paper currency seems more in jeopardy every day.
