"There's something about owning your own one-person business that over the years has manifested itself more than once. It's the strange solitude that accompanies the big moments. I don't know if solitude is the right word. It's probably, actually, "aloneness," or something closer to that. I remember when I worked in offices, as part of various "teams," going through crunch times, doing major pushes to finish a book we were working on by deadline, or get a catalog out before a sales fair. ...

... and thought about my old friends at work, and how there was a irrepressible camaraderie in sharing the stress and tight deadlines and impossible tasks that seem about to overwhelm. Even though everyone has their own job to do, there is something comforting in the collective suffering -- a shared context that doesn't need explaining. But when you own your own business and do almost everything yourself, you sometimes miss that context (not to mention, of course, the physical help, but that's something else completely). You have to tell complete strangers how busy you are -- you tell the mailman who's bringing you more mail-order yarn, "Oh man, I am so busy! I'm freaking out!" and he's like, "So what, who cares?" Because there's no one else in your "office," no one who is really a part of the hard times, when things get messed up or aren't going right, when balls that have been dropped need to be picked up, and, often, to be launched back into the air. It's just you -- little, overwhelmed you, in sweatpants and glasses with no time to eat lunch -- who bears the responsibility and the challenge. You don't want to crash and burn. At the same time, neither is there anyone who has had a significant hand in the work around to celebrate when something really great happens -- a big order, a little publicity, a pursued opportunity granted. You walk around the studio grinning like a fool, and calling your friends who are in other offices, doing other jobs, on teams of their own. Bearing the brunt of stebacks and successes, is, for the most part, your task alone, and finding the ability to keep in all in perspective -- well, it can be lonely sometimes."

This just about sums up what I've been feeling recently. I couldn't re-write all that, especially not when Alicia Paulson has already written so eloquently about it. I couldn't help but nod and nod, and feel my eyes prickle a little at the exasperation of working alone.

Now I have learnt the importance of having colleagues. Maybe not those who stab you in the back, but colleagues nonetheless. I will find that shared context in my next job.

Being in-between jobs currently is a little uncomfortable, to say the least, when there's a certain member of the family who expects a twenty-nine year old to already have an established career. And this someone is torturing everyone else by making his unsolicited views and selfish advice known. Makes mealtimes or being downstairs such a chore, I'm just saying. Yet again, the space of one's own room offers much-needed solace. At the risk of sounding better than thou, I feel sad for people who do not have their own space to retreat to. I really do.