This is just a quick reminder that the auction to benefit Terri Windling ends today at at 5 p.m. Pacific Time. Here’s a note from Terri herself about this remarkable event, with more wonderful photos of Tilly, the auction’s mascot and a very sweet girl who likes her bones.

My British passport arrived on Sunday by courier. I looked at that thing in amazement for a while, speechless that the long and trying journey is finally well and truly over. I am a dual citizenship of the US and UK, but it didn’t sink in at first, that British bit. Now it has. The first thing I did was to inspect the binding, and to compare the two.

Above is the top of the US passport. It is a tiny case-pamphlet-binding with a soft spine and a simple stitch in the center fold. The UK passport, below, is the same, although the stitching is tighter, neater, and doesn’t appear to be glued down at the top and bottom. The US chose blue and white thread, while the UK uses red, white and blue. What I find hilarious is that while the interior of the US passport is all about how great America is, the UK passport is all about the weather (note the little symbols in either corner).

The second thing I did was to reflect upon what toll the immigration process has taken and what this passport really means to me.

It means I no longer have to live in fear of deportation, or worse — the denial of my application for leave to remain or citizenship — for having expressed a political opinion. (Believe me when I say, I have opinions.)

There isn’t anything in the immigration rules that I’ve read to suggest that one’s political stance will be held against you — yet. But they’d like it that way and I remain unconvinced that it would not stand against someone if they were caught protesting either in person or online. It’s now hard enough to get here as it is, and in order to stay here, we’ve got to behave.

Well, I have behaved. Now what?

Now I can say things like David Cameron is no better than George W. Bush. I don’t know enough about UK politics to know who Cameron’s boss really is, like we all knew Bush really worked for the military industrial complex/corporation. But I do know he’s done this country no good whatsoever and it’s obvious he cares about the people of this land not one tiny bit at all. It’s almost impossible to tell who he cares about, other than himself. He even upset those monsters, big business, by telling the EU to piss off.

And look at this: Britain will suffer a much worse recession than previously imagined but it will not be as bad as in Europe, leading economists forecast today. Stop lying! Britain is already in a recession. From the same article: “Official forecasters are even placing their hopes on a bout of snow to help the UK.”

And people think I am wacky for believing in magick and studying old grimoires!

We have no idea what to do about the situation so let’s hope a blizzard comes along to solve our problems for us… What?

Now I can say that Britain is a debt-hungry country. Britain pushes its people into debt, it pushes the people who want to live here into debt — my total immigration bill came to around £4000.00. In US dollars, today that figure roughly equals $6219.00. I was one of the lucky ones who managed to scrape through without a solicitor. Had I needed legal assistance, I may as well have gone back to the States. As it was, we just recently finished paying off the credit card that got me through it. And I’ll be honest with you — it wasn’t even my credit card, it was my husband’s. I could have never have afforded that amount without… going into debt. Which, as a couple, is exactly what we did. Britain likes debt, because it depends on the interest evolving from that debt. If everyone was debt-free, this country would collapse in on itself.

So how does that work? The country itself is in debt, and in order to pay that debt it relies on the debt of its citizens. Economic logic is much wackier than I could hope to be. What am I talking about — the words “economic” and “logic” do not even belong together.

Now I can say “I told you so” to anyone who thought Obama was actually going to change anything. I did say that back when he was running for office the first time around. I was, I kid you not, called a Nazi for expressing an opinion that was hugely unpopular. What now? I get that it’s nice to have hope, but that’s all the man was able to offer, and I suggest now as I did then that we stop putting our hope into puppets and instead put it into ourselves.

Now I can say shame on you, America, for bludgeoning and gassing the people you are sworn to protect. This one boils my blood to incoherency. People are starving out there and you decide to waste money by bringing out enough police to take over a small nation? Nothing new there, then, eh?

And finally, now I can say these things, period. I have been into debt and back and I’ve kept my mouth shut. I was a good little citizen-to-be, for Queen and country, for the love of my husband, but mostly, because I was scared to death of losing everything I was working so hard to achieve. I understand that one must pay for the very real privilege of being British, trust me I do and I have paid. But shame on you, UKBA — no one, and I mean no one, should have to live in fear.

This is the tip of an iceberg that has been growing for a long time. One day I may calm down enough to present my political opinions in a more reasoned manner. Or I may not! First I need to get past the mind-blowing relief of being able to express them.

Testing the tech…

A friend requested I feed these posts to Livejournal so I’m seeing if this old plugin still works. Also testing the newly installed plugin that should feed this to Twitter (as opposed to Google’s Socialize rubbish, which I note does not work for me at all).

This is kind of a personal post, but it’s also kind of not. I’ve spoken to other people about this and I know I’m not alone. Perhaps everyone who works from home as a self-supporting creative experiences this at some point. And while I am letting off a little steam here, the intent is to help promote and foster an attitude of respect for those of us who have chosen this path, not to make anyone feel bad.

First I must qualify this word “work” for the purposes of this post. If I don’t, I suspect one of my daughters (CEO of her Household) will take me to task. For this post, I refer to work as what one does to bring in the income. I am not talking about stay-at-home-mums/dads whose job it is to tend house and/or children. They have the hardest jobs of all.

So here’s the story. Ever since setting out on a course of uncompromising self-employment some six or so years ago, I have received any number of mind-boggling comments from well-meaning people who don’t seem to believe that I actually have a job. As we prepare to set forth for our new life in France, these comments and helpful suggestions have become legion. I get so so frustrated by this, so tired of explaining again and again that actually, no we can’t just drop everything and spend four weeks touring Europe. No we aren’t going to France to sign onto the dole. No we don’t need to look for work.

Why not? Because I have a job. And tomorrow, Dis will have the same job. The poor soul doesn’t even get a break between one and the other! Today is his last day with his current employer. I have a list a mile long for him to start with tomorrow. Then he, too, will fully understand.

The thing is, people who work from home, people who are self-employed — those I know anyway — tend to work even harder than those people with a “regular” job. They know that if they fail, there is no one to blame but themselves. They know the food on the table depends on them. There is no boss to blame, nowhere to hide when things go wrong, and there generally isn’t a steady paycheck involved. Of course, if you aren’t self-employed and never have been, or if you have a regular income from whatever source and always have, you can’t possibly know what it’s like on the other side. The comments I receive are usually meant to be supportive, or they are made out of blissful ignorance, but after hearing them so many times, one does get annoyed. I really get annoyed at this one:

“At least you can have a cup of [insert beverage here] whenever you want.”

Imagine you work in an office. Could you have a cup of whatever whenever you want? No. And neither can I.

The idea that the individual who works at home can drop everything whenever they want is a myth. Like any myth, there is a grain of truth in there — sure, technically there is nothing to stop me from doing just that. Imagine the joy! Forget the deadlines, forget the orders that need shipping, forget the emails that need answering — those customers and colleagues don’t really want any kind of a timely response anyway, do they? If I could have a cup of coffee whenever I wanted, I would totally sit around all day drinking coffee. But what happens is that cup of coffee gets put off, and put off, until finally it’s forgotten. Some weeks even lunch is a distant dream. Here’s another one:

“You can set your own schedule!”

It would be more accurate to say my schedule sets me. Certain things need to happen by certain times, regardless of how I feel about it. I don’t even get sick days unless I’m so ill I can’t get out of bed. My working day begins about five minutes after I’ve rolled out of bed. I come downstairs, make the coffee and then I sit down at the kitchen table and start answering business email (and some personal email if I’m lucky). My working day stops at around 7 or 8pm, when I finally shut down the computers. (I can’t answer email I can’t see.) Somewhere in there I will stop to cook the evening meal, unless Dis is doing the cooking that night. If he is cooking, I don’t stop until we sit down to eat. That is my schedule, that has been my schedule for more months than I care to remember. Some months are like this. Some aren’t, but even when they aren’t, the same discipline still applies.

I’m sure what that comment really means is I don’t have to ask permission from some boss to take a holiday. This is true! I don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to take a day or a week off, except my own. But I can’t just randomly choose these dates. They still have to be scheduled around whatever is going on. This is why all of my holidays for the last two years have been working holidays. Even our holidays in France have been working holidays. That house isn’t going to restore itself. I take time off around working events, like the Day of the Dead Conference. If there had been no conference, there would have been no holiday. Which brings me to:

“It must be nice to not have to leave your house.”

You know what? When there is a blizzard raging outside and five feet of snow on the front porch, it really is nice not to have to leave the house. Except as long as the post office is open, I most likely will have to leave the house. Orders don’t ship themselves. And really, thank goodness for them — you try looking at the same walls, day and night, and tell me how you feel after six months. I stare at the walls, work stares back. Forget maintaining or developing any social skills (the internet doesn’t count). I suspect this is one reason many writers go to conventions — it’s the only time they get to see most of their friends!

“What do you mean? You can go out whenever you want.”

If I went out whenever I wanted to go out, I’d fire me. Would you want an employee who wandered off to smell the flowers whenever they pleased? No. Neither do I.

And this one! This one.

“It must be nice to have all that free time.”

I never know what to say to that one. Usually I just laugh hysterically and walk away.

I’ll be the first to admit it, I am living the dream. I work in the comfort of my own home at a job I passionately adore and I would not trade this for the world. But self-employment requires discipline, ambition and a willingness to devote your entire life, if need be, to the cause. It is not about doing whatever you want whenever you want. Essentially, I am already doing what I want — it just so happens that what I want to do involves a million little details that I really don’t want to do, but that have to be done anyway, and they have to be done on a schedule.

I honestly don’t know what I have to do to prove that I have a job with everything that entails, nor do I understand why any self-employed-works-at-home person should have to prove it. For us creatives, is it the nature of what we do? For the general populace, does “sitting around painting pictures” not count as work? Does “sitting around writing novels” not count as work? Where do people think these novels and things come from? Where do they think the money comes from? It’s certainly not growing from the apple tree out back. If only!

So if any of you experience any of this, take heart and know you’re not alone. You’re doing a very brave thing and I, for one, salute you. And if someone tells you it must be nice to have all that free time, just think to yourself “I’m so talented I make this stuff look easy”, and then give yourself a big hug. There is always time for a hug.