Freelancing and the Law of Diminishing Returns

diminishing returns, also called law of diminishing returns or principle of diminishing marginal productivity, economic law stating that if one input in the production of a commodity is increased while all other inputs are held fixed, a point will eventually be reached at which additions of the input yield progressively smaller, or diminishing, increases in output.

— Encyclopedia Brittanica

I could give you anything but time.

— Elvis Costello

It's Labor Day, and I'm working. I worked yesterday, too. I worked Saturday. This is the nature of things when you have clients instead of employers, and when your clients pay for prompt attention and rapid response. If I want to take time off, even a day, I have to let clients know in advance; I've learned this by making the mistake of not letting clients know in advance. A lot of what I do is not especially time-sensitive — does it make a difference, really, if you get manuscript edits back on Wednesday instead of Monday? — but some of it is, and some of the work I do is not the kind you can leave for 24 hours at a stretch without some kind of backup in place. I have no backup. That's also a common issue for freelancers. 

I'd hoped to take a week off in July. I announced it to my clients well in advance. I had plans, or at least plans to do nothing, for at least five days and maybe as long as seven. But then one of my clients got an offer, and in turn made me an offer, neither of us could refuse. I figured I'd find a week to take off in August. 

Instead, this August was the busiest I've ever had, in 15 years of freelancing. I turned work down in August. I'm still catching up. And I am exhausted. 

A friend said to me yesterday that I work all the time, and it was meant as a personal criticism, not as a compliment. I admitted it. How could I deny it? I've gotten myself into a spiral I don't know how to break, though I see that it is unsustainable. I feel so anxious, all the time, about so many things I can't control. The only reliable remedy I've found for that anxiety is completing a task for a client, and the only sure motivator for me is an external deadline. So I keep the to-do list full, and I move from task to task, and I am so tired and distracted I put my phone in the dryer yesterday. (I heard it thunking before any damage was done.) 

I need — I need — what do I need? It's more than a single day off, but I don't know what. 

A Facebook meme is going around about the Ten Books that Have Stayed With You, and I posted my list last week after Erin Mitchell tagged me. One of the books I always include on that list is Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. My mother gave me a copy for Confirmation, and it ranks second (only behind John Connolly's The Book of Lost Things) as the book I've most often given other people. This morning I pulled it out again, and found this:

I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact — to borrow from the language of the saints — to live "in grace" as much of the time as possible.

If I could find that place, I tell myself, I would not need to be so busy. If I were not so busy, I tell myself, I could find that place. 

I have no answers to this.