Maybe My Student Loan Wont go to Waste?

I paid off my student loans last year (and my car this year, I own that sucker). All that's left between me and my dream of owning a homestead is our collective CRA debt and someone to hold my hand ever so gently in purchasing our first home. 

One of the things about owning a home that makes me nervous is my lack of faith in myself to be able to continue paying for it, I have this pipe dream of owning a home so far a way and so inexpensive that I can pay the entire thing off in one year and just live off the land letting Jon pay the property taxes (or selling enough art or singing on stage enough that I can do it myself), but cleaning enough hours to sustain a mortgage in this economy? Forget about it. I'm priced at a premium and my work is some of the best in the city, I'm not even priced the highest anymore and since I'm a freelancer who doesn't have employees it's always me who you can expect to show up to your home to clean it. 

But I'm getting tired. 

I've been hustling houses for almost ten years, have been legitimately burnt out twice now, and I'm slowing down in the amount of houses I can clean in the run of the week. I have to keep my standard of work high and so in this era of cleaning that means less homes, which means less income. It makes me nervous that maybe one day I won't be able to earn a living by cleaning houses at all, that my body will get so tired and so sore it will just stop (I don't even want to mention the looming threat of the AI robot takeover). 

I went to school a few times in my young life, Tourism Management, Business and Interior Decorating (and I actually stayed long enough to complete the course and get my diploma in the last one). I worked in the Interior Decorating field for an entire year before went back to serving in restaurants (waaaaaaaay more money, way more fun at that age, and way less needing to prove yourself daily in order to survive in the environment). I mixed paint at a paint store (Dulux which is owned by Dupont, and the absolute fucking irony of learning about the Law of Attraction for the first time while working at a Dupont owned store is beyond hilarious) I made connections with some professional painters who frequented the store and I'd do side jobs of painting people's houses with them (and I got pretty good pretty fast, I still don't use tape when I cut in) and I did colour consultations in people's homes, and even created the design for one person's bathroom. People would often come into the store and get free decorating consultations from me if the story wasn't busy (I was the only certified Interior Decorator on site and my boss loved that I was naive enough to benefit him with no increase in pay, or think to tell the client we'd take the consultation to a more appropriate location where they pay me directly for my services). 

Last year I thought I was going to start an Interior Decorating business of my own and I created an inspiration page on Instagram where I made these cool looking mood boards and tagged the companies I used to create the vibe (I even took on one decorating client and two consultations for free just to get my feet back in the water). The problem with the account was that I didn't know myself yet enough to know what my style was. I wanted to appeal to everyone and yet somehow still be weird enough to suit my developing taste. I thought it would give me more business but it actually just made me look uncertain. I ended up shutting the entire thing down when the conflict started on the other side of the world (I know the proper word, I would also like to keep this blog if you know what I mean). I wanted to "leave society" anyway, and I couldn't bring myself to give a flying shit about what people's homes looked like with the state of things. Now I have a slightly different perspective: it's not that I don't care about the situation we're all in, but that I'm never going to be able to do anything about it if I never acquire money or influence. 

And I would very much like to have more money, especially without doing physical labour to acquire it. 

I'm not saying that Interior Decorating will immediately replace my full time freelancing career, but it is something I can see earning me enough extra income to pay off the CRA and eventually be able to replace cleaning once we do own a homestead in the country. 

So now I have an entire system running: I have my personal brand where I live in my purpose and I sing acoustic folk songs, talk about spirituality and homesteading. I have this blog where I journal about anything and everything related to everything I enjoy and share recipes and homesteading information, I have my freelance cleaning career where I clean folks homes and offer virtual consultation services, I have my Interior Decorating side hustle and my handmade home decor project. 

In my mind it kind of looks like this:

 

Yeah I bet you saw the sneaky little "youtube" mention in there. I don't know exactly what I'm doing with that yet, and honestly I don't know how I'm going to have the time for all of this already (I do have a general idea, I just need to see it all functioning in practice while also running the home itself... Jon is a massive asset in that area too, I am a feminist after all and I didn't marry a freaking loser... it's just a lot and I'm a woman who regularly prioritizes rest). My home doesn't feel aesthetic enough to run a youtube right now, and I don't have the disposable income to acquire a sewing machine yet let alone a good camera, but I'm working towards it. 

Thank you to myself from the past for doing the decade of consistent inner healing work to actually get to a place where I can even focus on career without being in an excruciating amount of emotional pain. I can't wait to see where the journey takes me, and thank you for coming along for the ride. 

Natasha MacIsaac