Ruksana Hussain

Support for the following podcast is provided by the user experienced specialists at Johns and Taylor. More information follows this episode. What if you move halfway around the world to pursue your dream job, but your dream job put you in the hospital. I'm Joe Taylor Jude. This is Search and Replace Yorksana Hussein has been writing profiles about food, travel, and community leaders for over two decades, but her pass to a career as a professional writer in the United States got off to a bumpy start. I am a communications professional and journalist by background or in an India, raised in Oman and moved to the US in two thousand and six as a twenty five year old and initially could not work because of visa issues, and by the time I did earn what you call an employment document to be able to legally work in the US, we had the two thousand and eight recession, which means that I could not find employment very easily. So I ended up taking on I'm going to say, five or six different part time gigs in an effort to one understand what I wanted my future in the US to look like and to sort of bring myself up to speed. Roxana regrouped and freelanced her way through that recession, and her editors liked that she took a broad approach to her work At the start of her career. I am what you would call a features generalist my trade. I enjoy research, I enjoy learning, and so I love writing about pretty much anything under the sun where I get to learn something new. So obviously that means the stories that people tell, backgrounds and new projects, new experiences. So for me, it's enjoying that the journey of telling that story, whatever that story might be. Having all these different options, I said to myself, I'm going to give myself five years to explore each of these to the best that I can and decide which one of those I'm going to pursue. But that also meant that I was exploring five different courier paths not necessarily related to each other. That's not a sustainable career choice, though, especially for a writer. I should have known to slow down. I think there's some instances of fatigue or burnout, and I simply kept going because when you are young and you think you have all these years ahead of you, you'd not imagine that you can actually be burnt out. Or tired. That brings me to twenty thirteen when I had my health scare, and it pretty much was going to bed one day, getting up the next morning, and not being able to get out of bed, and that's it. And that was something that took six months of recovery before I could walk on my own, drive a car on my own, or be left alone unsupervised to take care of myself. And that was scary. And that's when six months turned out to be a good time for me to reevaluate the five years that I've been spending doing all these different things and saying, Okay, there has to be one thing I have to focus on because that's the only way I can take care of my health. With that initial six months of recovery behind her, Roxana employed a more measured approach to taking on new work. I had to turn down a lot of very fun assignments during that process, and that made me think of what is it that I would like to be able to do once I'm able to walk and drive a car again. Learning from that moment to put myself first and put up a schedule that I wanted to work with, rather than working on a schedule that my clients or my projects had been on. And that's a very different mindset to have if you're someone that has been taught that you need to hustle to make things happen, to put yourself first. That was really hard. Definitely came upon this realization somewhere in that six month recopy period, lying in bed, that I've been running behind every single project I could find. Right if someone said can you do this? My answer was yes, fake it till you make it. You'll learn as you go. Those are not good lessons to be teaching people, and I had to learn the hard way that saying yes to everything that came out way was what got me there unwell, realizing that I cannot keep saying yes to everyone. There are some things that I will just have to say no too because they simply do not serve me well. It's about looking at how certain opportunities contribute to sort of the overall quality of your life experiences. And that is literally how I gauge or measure every single opportunity that comes to my way, whether that's personal, professional, financial, whatever it is. I will say that the minute I had my sole focus on freelance writing, editing, communications, projects in general. It became very clear to me what I had to say no too, and then the projects that came along my way. I tried to be very cognizant of how that is going to help me move forward in my career. Today, Roxana splits her time between writing for a variety of publications and producing a monthly magazine of her own. I don't have to just wait for projects to come to me. I can make these projects work for me. So where do I want to see my work, Who are the kinds of people I want to work with? What sorts of projects do I want to work on? What are some things I want to do, and more importantly, what are the things I don't want to do. I have a schedule that I love working with. I have a project right now that I'm very excited about. I have clients that I love working with and I look forward to every day. I think I'm definitely in place where I am professionally content. I am personally content and very excited about the future holes for me. That's Los Angeles based writer Roxana Hussein. We've got links to her work and to her monthly lifestyle magazine Traveler and Tourist. In our show notes and on our website at searchain Replace Show. Also in our show notes, Wanda Thibodeau introduces us to bomb Shelter, Betty or Ben, the type of independent professional that loves to say yes to everything and usually ends up regretting it. Wanda went into inc Magazine and published her list of tactics to stop that behavior if your works starting to threaten everything else in your life. And Lowest Mulconian writes about how disconnects between our work lives and our personal values end up resulting in overwhelm. She's posted the quiz and some other questions to ask yourself that can help clarify why you are owned to do list maybe overflowing. We've got all those stories and more in our show notes and on our website at Search and Replace dot Show. Search and Replace was produced by Nicole Hubbard with support from Connie Evdence, Amelia Loman, April Smith, and Podcast Taxi executive producer Lorie Taylor. Our theme music was composed by Alex Rufire. I'm Joe Taylor Junior. This has been a podcast Taxi Radio production support for Search and Replace is provided by Johnson Taylor User experienced specialists serving media and technology companies that want their websites to work. Learn more about how top performing businesses eliminate barriers between customers and their goals at www. Dot Make the website work for me dot com