Why I Hate When People Say I’m “Lucky”
Get ready for a rant with a touch of sarcasm, but more annoyance than anything else. If you prefer funny rants, check out my State of Puerto Rico According to Rease video series instead.
This post is about something that I know a lot of travelers and freelancers also struggle with: being told that we are lucky to have the freedom to travel and work for ourselves
Why calling me “lucky” is incredibly offensive
Let’s take a look at the definition of “Lucky” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary:
Lucky:
: having good luck
: producing a good result by chance
: resulting from good luck
I think the key words here are “result by chance.”
Yep. One day, I woke up and someone had dumped $10,000 dollars into my bank account and purchased me a ticket to Argentina. From then on, flights itineraries just popped into my email every so often. Magical money fairies kept pumping cash into my bank account. Paying clients just rained from the skies and said “Rease, please! Take my money! Don’t even worry about working for it!”
Oh wait, that is not how it happened at all.
What people think the end of the month is like after I get all my payments/pay all my bills:
What it’s actually like:
Prior to being a traveling freelancer, I was a stressed-out workaholic. I worked a full time job and 2 part time jobs while taking a full course load in college so I could finish my 2 majors and a minor in 4 years because that’s all I could ever afford. (And by afford, I mean, handle the crippling debt before it swallowed me whole).
When people say I am “so lucky” to be able to travel so much, I want to punch them in the face. When someone hears that I work from home and can work from anywhere then says “oh, how lucky!” I clench my fists and jaw, and try not to lose my shit. I know from talking with other travelers and freelancers that I am not alone.
How freelancers feel when you tell them they are lucky:
People love to tell me how “lucky” I am, but I’d like to break down why what some people see as “luck” is really just a combination of setting priorities and hard work.
I make travel a priority
Most people have very little idea how much money I make because, well, it’s none of their damn business. However, I can tell you that right now, as an “oh so lucky” freelancer, I make much less after taxes than most of my friends. And yet, I take quite a few trips a year, all of which I pay for out of pocket. The amount of traveling I do has nothing to do with luck and everything to do with making it a priority both financially and time-wise.
I do not own a home. My car is from 2005, fully paid off, and I plan to drive it until it dies. I rarely buy new things unless I really have to. Travel is what I choose to spend the majority of my money on, so it is not lucky that I have money to travel, it is strategic, and something I make other sacrifices for.
I work all the time
Listen, I know my instagram will occasionally show me at the beach on a Wednesday. I’m aware that my Facebook and Twitter sometimes make it sound like I am just living life traveling from one bottle of wine to the next. But in between all that freedom to make my own schedule, there is a lot of work getting done. If I’m at the beach getting drunk on a Wednesday, I probably worked extra on Saturday. And yeah, sometimes I put booze in my coffee or have a glass of wine at my desk, that’s definitely one of the benefits of working for myself. You know what kind of benefits I don’t get? Health Insurance. Paid vacation days. Sick leave. Those are the sacrifices I make to work for myself. It doesn’t feel very “lucky” when I have to pay for independent health insurance or work while I have a fever.
This fever lasted for 4 days, and because it happened to be crunch time for some projects, I had to work all 4 of them.
Freelancing is freaking stressful
Choosing to be a freelancer means I have to constantly hunt down new clients. I can’t be sure how much money is coming in from month to month, and when I get that money, I have to have the foresight to save a huge chunk of it because the US Government is going to tax the living hell out of me at years end. Why? Because Fuck Independent Contractors, that’s why.
The government to contractors around tax time:
Do you know how many times I have freaked out because my clients started running out of money meaning they stopped sending me work, or, worse, sent me work but then decided not to send me a paycheck?
When’s the last time your 9-5 job said “hey, I need you to keep coming in every day but I’ll just pay you when some more money comes in, is that cool?”
I bet your boss has never asked you to do something outside of work hours and then said “I’m not going to pay you, but you’re going to get GREAT exposure.”
And yet, that’s the kind of nonsense that so many freelancers put up with every day.
I travel smart
In the first 8 months of 2015, I have taken 4 roundtrip flights, two of which I changed at the last minute, and two of which I brought Pedro along with me on. Do you know how much I spent total? $66.
I have racked up so many Southwest Airlines points that I earned the Companion Pass 2 years in row. Thanks to all those points and Pedro’s ability to fly free with me, I’ve been able to book several flights with points and pay only the security fees.
I earned those points not only from flying, but by using several tactics that I took a lot of time and effort to research. You can use the same tactics, and then you could earn points and travel for cheap, and hopefully, no one will tell you how lucky you are.
