Choices

Today I'm grappling with an issue of work, finances, energy, and emotional health. How do all those things affect an IVF cycle? And me?

I'm a freelancer, so I'm constantly hustling to keep a steady workload. Work begets work, and all that.

Well, a major project of mine was slated to finish up by the end of March. Now, though, it has been extended by 3 months and the client just offered me the job of seeing the thing through to the end. The pay is good. It amounts to, naturally, the exact cost of our IVF cycle. (Why does it have to be that very amount? What does that MEAN, mighty Universe?)

I want to say yes, because that is how you keep your business going. It can be feast or famine, and you never know when the next dead period might hit. If it's a good deal and you know you can pull it off (even if that means you put in long, long days), you say yes.

On the other hand, I want to say no. I had a TERRIBLE time keeping it together during the last cycle attempt. I wasn't overly emotional or stressed, but I was impossibly distracted. That Lupron messed me up. Somehow I accomplished all work goals, but it was rough going. Should I really set myself up for that a second time?

Here's the part where I talk myself through it.

Possible reasons to accept the job:

• I won't be on Lupron this time.
• I've done this before and might be better at it a second time.
• The money on top of other expected income would make those 3 months particularly lucrative for this or any year.
• This would be extra money that we weren't factoring in when we decided to go ahead.
• Taking it keeps me in good with a client I want to keep happy.
• I think being super busy helped me not obsess too much over the last cycle.
• If things don't go well with the cycle, having the extra work may help me cope.
• Work may indeed be the only thing I have to keep me busy in my old age, so I should focus on that.

Possible reasons to decline the job:

• I will still be on drugs, one of them new. I don't know how I'll feel.
  
• This would be a heavier workload than I had during the last cycle. It's really too much, and my list should stop here.
• I should create breathing room where I can, and not be the catalyst for my own suffocation.
• I have enough other work lined up anyway.
• This would be extra money that we weren't factoring in when we decided to go ahead.
• I've already made this client happy.
• I can't do everything just because it's there.
• I can't do something just because the client wants me to. (This is a different concept than the one above.)
• After 15 years in the business and 6 working for myself with maybe 2 too-short-for-my-liking dead times, I need to acknowledge that I am not in a feast-or-famine situation. I can get more work.
• What kind of crap attitude is that last point under "reasons to accept"?

The Universe (or its minions) is toying with me by dangling that exact cycle fee in my face. If it was any other amount, it wouldn't stand out as anything but extra work I don't need. But because it equals the cost of IVF, I'm in the position of choosing money and meaningless pursuits over sanity and my best shot at getting my heart's desire. Something Else over Me.

I'm calling the Universe's bluff and choosing Me for a change. Now is as good a time as any to mix things up.