Not a “Real” Job

Life's Work or Living Wage

“When are you going to get a ‘real’ job?”

I’ve been asked this question countless times in my adult life. My midwife was the first person to tell me I should leave my newborn and toddler to take a job, shortly after giving birth to my second child. While I was breastfeeding my infant daughter, my husband, who had abandoned his pregnant wife and our small son after only three years of marriage, asked me when I was going to get a job.

Being a mother is a full-time job. It’s not only a real job, it’s one of the most important jobs there is. And it’s not 40 hours a week. Or, 60-80 hours a week. It’s a 24/7 never-ending job. In the beginning, it’s an utterly exhausting and thankless job. And it’s a completely unpaid labor of love, for life!

Few people actually take being a mother seriously. Motherhood is just something that happened to them, in most cases unintentionally. And if inconvenient, it’s something they can outsource to grandparents, daycare or nannies and then eventually the school system, whether that’s public, private or boarding schools.

I worked for the local businesses of people I knew after graduating from high school at 18, until a month before giving birth for the first time at 24. While married, I was a stay-at-home mom, working part-time in a friend’s home office after my son was born. Then, after divorce, I took an office job that allowed me to bring my two children to work with me and breastfeed at my desk.

When we moved to Ecuador in 2013, my work was remote. And since 2015, I’ve worked solely for myself, slowly and organically growing my business. I’ve been teaching classes, doing coaching and distance sessions, learning new modalities to add to my offerings, writing guides and blogs and developing self-study courses.

But I can’t say I’ve achieved any real success. I rely mostly on referrals and there has never been enough of them or consistent monthly clients to ever have even a sufficient income. Finding ideal clients and converting them into paying customers has been the biggest factor in my failure as a solopreneur.

Marketing, at least the way I was taught, is not a game I’m willing to play. I don’t like self-promotion and I’m not going to do “all the things”. What they don’t tell you when starting your own business, is that more than half of your time is not going to be invested in your actual work or spent with actual clients. It’s invested in constantly creating new free content to increase social media engagement and finding the people who are happy to pay you for your skills and expertise. I find all this busy work exhausting, unproductive and such a waste of my time and misuse of my energy.

My business is not a side hustle. And I’m not willing to “do the hustle” to expand or even stay in business. Failure doesn’t inspire me to try harder or apply force to make it happen. I don’t despair. I get done.

A business guru says, “If you’re not making money, you have an expensive hobby, not a business”. But I’m also not in business to make six or seven figures. I have no interest in getting so big that I have to spend my time managing a team. I’m a one woman show, not a boss babe. I have a precious few years on this planet and I’m very conscious of who I choose to give my time and energy to.

My soul is from an advanced civilization of highly conscious beings where we share our gifts freely and generously. There is no monetary system. People don’t work just to “make a living” so they can pay monthly bills. And no one is trying to get rich, become a millionaire or keep up with anyone. Nor is it a gift economy. There is no bartering or fair trade, reciprocal payment in kind or any such energy exchange. Everyone just has what they need and their life’s work is connected with their life purpose, not dictated by their survival, greed or desired lifestyle.

Here on Earth humans have to pay for the privilege of being alive. So, as for getting a “real” job, I may have to. But that would mean I wouldn’t be able to do any of the things I do now. Because, like being a mother, what I do is not a job, it’s a way of being.

Being an energy healer and writer requires a slow, intentional lifestyle. A day job working in the sea of the unconscious wouldn’t allow me to be in the energetic state I need to facilitate healing or formulate an idea worth writing about. I need room to breathe and space to think.

Energy healing requires daily self-care and energy work. Rest and staying grounded. Clean eating and no drinking. And having an open schedule to be available.

Writing takes a lot of time. And not just the time to structure sentences and group them into paragraphs. It takes the time to think and compose my thoughts. And time to think requires, at least for me, uninterrupted peace and quiet.

I’ve been told I should start a YouTube channel and create content for free. I don’t want to spend time filming and editing videos. Nor would I ever even consider working for Google.

For a short time I considered creating a Patreon. But after I saw how they were treating the creators they didn’t like, I decided not to go that route to monetizing my content. Last year, I started my Substack writer’s account and created three publications: Feng Shui Yourself, Pearls of Wisdom and HER Rituals.

The free publications I write on a weekly and now HER Rituals on a daily basis, is a lot of work. And also not a “real” job. After a year on Substack, I finally turned off the emailed notifications of my failure here as well. Seeing the daily reminders that I have a 38% open rate, 1 like (my own), 0 comments, 0 new free subscribers and 0 new paid subscriptions, doesn’t motivate me to try harder. I will continue to write and publish on this platform and my website because I have something to say.

I’m interested to see if I can shift my energy to be a vibrational match to more ideal clients and like-minded readers. Do the inner work so I can continue doing my life’s work. And persevere with having “not a real job”.

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Pearls of Wisdom is a personal blog of the wisdom writings of Dara Eden that fall outside the realms of feng shui, The 8 Elements and her other personal energy work. Established in 2014, the blog is an expression of her highest values: Sovereignty, Truth, Wisdom & Inner Peace. It’s devoted to increasing awareness, expanding consciousness, bringing knowledge, sharing innerstandings and offering wisdom to the sovereign souls inhabiting the Earth.

Dara Eden is a writer and wisdom keepHER. The name, Dara, means “pearl of wisdom”. Pearls are formed when a microscopic irritant, like a grain of sand, embeds itself within the soft tissue of a shelled mollusk. To protect itself, the oyster or clam covers the invading gritty particle with concentric layers of iridescent crystalline calcium to form treasures, pearls of great beauty and worth. Gifts of the sea, pearls are the oldest known gem and the only gem that does not need to be cut, shaped or polished. Pearls are associated with elegance and luxury and are a symbol of mystery and purity. Pearls represent priceless knowledge, the rare wisdom that begins as a tiny, random, common irritant.