I Am Not Your Inspiration
I am a chronically ill writer, copywriter, subtitler, subeditor, former performance artist, theatre director and teacher. It sounds like an impressive CV. And to have done so many types of jobs whilst battling bad health and relapses is... inspiring. Apparently.
But I’m not a superhero. Far from it. I’m mostly tired and struggling to keep up.
I wonder if the concept of the ‘supercrip’ in popular culture is responsible for this need to be inspiring. Is there an expectation that disabled people overcome pain and sickness so as not to make their colleagues uncomfortable?
The simple solution is to rest and recuperate. Right?
Yet I am a freelancer, and I don’t have savings. Although I'll never look back, I did not choose to go freelance for ‘lifestyle’ reasons. Like many chronically ill and disabled people, it’s not a choice but a necessity. A small poll on my Instagram revealed that 80% of my followers were freelancing out of necessity too.
The tyranny that we live under, in my opinion, is the cult of the ‘side hustle’. That is, the idea that we must take on extra work to supplement our main income. Self-help books such as Side Hustle Millionaire encourage us to use our spare time to get rich. Millennials are the most likely to have a side hustle, yet statistics say that this is mostly due to the rising cost of living or to pay off student debt.
For freelancers, the side hustle is not a money-making scheme but a livelihood. We don’t have a steady job to protect us from the risks and potential failures. There is no assurance you will be paid for your labour or that the job will be regular, so you have your fingers in as many pies as possible. People employing you want the assurance that you are not relying on them for income. Not only that, but they are looking for people taking (unpaid) initiative and leading in their own fields; cultural capital that they can sample and discard when it doesn’t fit their brand.
Photo by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash: a hand reaches above the surface of a large body of water, holding a lit sparkler. Orange specks reflect its sparks off the water.
Freelance work is treated as if it were a side hustle
So, you juggle more plates, because not only are you proficient, with a-lot-of-attention-to-detail but you must do it in multiple places. This brings me to another term often bandied about in the freelance world: ‘the passion project’.
A passion project is something that you do in your spare time to make your CV look nice. There are countless websites advising you on the most impressive-looking passion projects to embellish your CV.
The passion project assaults me on two fronts. Firstly, because that which you are most passionate about; the feeling of joy that gets you up in the morning, has been marketised for the purposes of the job market. Secondly, there is an expectation that you shouldn’t be paid for it.
These assumptions are imbued with ableism. The more the side hustle and passion project are normalised, the more employers expect them. It attacks our rights to rest and wellbeing, and in this world, disabled people don't have a fighting chance because of it.
We are expected to be superheroes
Mr Anderson, the office worker by day and Neo, the hacker, by night.
I recently re-watched The Matrix, and when Morpheus urges Neo to free his mind from his body, it occurred to me that the superhero story has also become embedded into ableist narratives.
‘Freeing the mind’ is the only way Neo can realise his true potential, unhindered by the constraints of his inconvenient corporeality in an unreal world. It reminded me of the times I’d been asked whether my symptoms were all in my mind, but also of the ‘virtual reality’ many of us are now working in, at home, on our laptops.
Do we have to free our minds from the corporeal limitations of a day in the office? Physically, you can’t be in two places at once, but theoretically, online, you could. How far are we, and employers, prepared to challenge that conception and our capabilities as humans?
“Heroes no longer wear capes.”
As they keep saying. Anyone viewed as abnormal, sick, disabled, ‘irregular’, must fight harder to be one of them: super-smart, super-strong, super-kind, super-likable. This ableist narrative now bleeds into the expectations of the professional world. In Zoom calls and offices, we will emulate the movie heroes on the screen. Even when we can’t be productive, we will be enlightening or admirable.
Your average Joe has permission to be average, but I feel that I do not. As someone who makes media content online, I feel crushed by the expectation I must be omnipresent; posting frequently to those social media accounts I set up before I realised they expected to take over my life, like possessive lovers.
I am trying to change that expectation. I am resisting the temptation to present an idealised version of myself online, as I reaffirm that I am not a superhero, but I do want to change the world for the better.