30-Day Economic Stability Challenge: More health group love

Yesterday's post on health insurance for the creative freelancer left me a little deflated. There might be one group there that might offer me better health insurance, but most of them were for New York City freelancers and therefore no use for me.

So what do you do if you don't live in New York and still want the warm embrace of group health insurance? Consider these options:

Your local Chamber of Commerce
I know most creative professionals think of chambers of commerce as a place for local restaurant owners, accountants and the owner of the biggest bowling alley in town--in other words, not our crowd.

But some chambers of commerce offer health coverage for sole proprietors and small businesses. All groups have dues, some of which are deductible, but you get the bonus of networking with professionals who could use a good writer or editor. Doesn't seem like a bad deal.

National Association of the Self-Employed (NASE)
Hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs belong to this group, which offers discounts on everything from roadside assistance costs to term life insurance. It offers health insurance through the MEGA Life and Health Insurance Company. But beware: There are red flags on this company at sites such as The Ripoff Report and Attorney Pages. I haven't been able to find any reports on this from legitimate news sources, and would love to hear if you have experience with this company denying claims in bad faith. If that's the case, I don't see the difference between having health insurance through them and the individual market.

I also received a call from a group called One Person Group, which offers group health coverage to self-employed and sole-proprietor professionals. It claims to be the first of its kind, and I'd love to hear if there are freelance writers who use it and how they like it.

Know of others? Leave them in the comments so other freelancers can benefit from your knowledge.

Photo by woodleywonderworks.

30-Day Economic Stability Challenge: The great health insurance debate

I watched Sicko the other weekend. Well, I watched part of it. Okay, 15 minutes. Then I had to turn it off.

Anxiety rose up in me because I knew what the people Michael Moore interviewed experienced could easily happen to me. I'm self-employed. I'm on individual health insurance. And I discovered by reading the fine print of my renewal notice at the end of last year two things:

My insurer will increase my premium twice this year.
Once for the annual increase and again when I turn 35 and jump to the next age bracket. I'm anxiously waiting for that letter informing me of how much I'll be paying.

My insurer will review my "membership" in their health plan monthly this year, instead of annually.
Meaning? I assume it means if I get some dread disease in June, I'll be out of health insurance in July. I'm grateful I'm healthy, but I shouldn't have to be lucky. I should have some kind of decent health insurance that does what it promises it will do--cover me for any expenses that develop from a new health condition. I don't trust them. Nor should I.

Still, I know I am lucky to have health insurance, which has covered my allergy spray and treated me for an abscess on my back last year that just finished healing. If I didn't have that, I don't know what shape I'd be in now, financially or physically.

Since this blog is about serenity, I will not subject you to the blood-pressure-raising statistics about healthcare and bankruptcy. But I will say that this is such a major component of economic stability in this country that it's getting a full week of posts on the subject.

I'll cover the options available and whether you should consider them, with the help of some experts.

But today, I want to ask you two things:

How does having health insurance contribute to your self-employed serenity, however you define that?

Where do you get your insurance and do you recommend it to others?

If I get some good tips, I'll incorporate them into future posts.

Photo by allaboutgeorge.

What comforts you?

You may have noticed that it's been more than two months since my last post. In that time, I had to contend with a triple whammy of very unserene things:

* That illness I described? Just today I was told I'm healed. I may still have surgery at the end of the month.
* Someone stole my credit card number and my bank shut down my card without telling me, leading to some rejected monthly expenses that I now have to make up. Now I'm going to start the process of ordering my credit reports to make sure there's nothing fishy on there.
* Our 17-year-old love-muffin kitty passed away rather traumatically in the middle of the night.
* Deadlines continued to come and go throughout. I queried, I networked and I worked on getting better at workflow and time management.

You may be asking, "How do you stay serene amid so many challenges?" The answer, at least according to my experience, is you don't.

You fall apart. And you hang on for dear life to the things that comfort and the things that keep you sane, if not serene.

It turns out that for me, that thing is gardening.

I have idyllic memories of running through my mother's garden as a child, eating strawberries and raspberries off the vine and hiding behind tall, feathery corn stalks in the arid heat of a southern California summer. From the time I put my first bean in a wet napkin and watched it grow into a plant, gardening filled me with hope: transformation, growth and life are all around us if we want it.

So I have lettuce and green beans to eat from my garden and every day I go out and watch the plants for a little bit. I do a little weeding, I sweep up, I water. I watch the basil seeds sprout. I feel hopeful.

What's fallen off is a lot of the more rigid structure I created for my day: I don't do yoga regularly right now, on the advice of my chiropractor, who is trying to correct a stuck s-bone in my pelvis. I don't take a break every hour and stretch right now. I don't turn off the TV at 10 p.m. sharp, and often leave it on till 11 or later to avoid thinking about the grief and stress that's always just under the surface.

What's perhaps most useful is to look at what I stuck with throughout this time. These are the changes that, so far, are sticking. And I think they show that some small changes can make a big difference.

* I still go to the gym two to three three times a week for gentle cardio and some good stretching.
* I still meditate and write about what's stressing me out first thing in the morning. I know meditating twice a day would probably bring me more relief, but when I'm in grief, sitting with my feelings isn't fun and I can only do it in tiny doses.
* I still go through all the emails from yesterday and today first thing in the morning and put them in their own folders. It keeps me up to date and following up on interview schedules.
* I still take the time to make nutritious meals for myself breakfast lunch and dinner. The garden certainly helps with that. I just planted chard and broccoli, and I can't wait for it to be ready in a few months.

I think I stuck with these things because they are very small things I can do to take care of myself when everything around me seems to be falling apart. I don't have the energy for an hour-long yoga practice morning or night right now, but I can spend 10 minutes meditating when I wake up in the morning.

It's the small things that keep me going.

What about you? How do you cope when you're at risk of being overwhelmed?

Serenity Tool: Time is of the Essence

I bought this cute little strawberry timer the other week with the intention of timing my oatmeal on the stove. But this week I found another use for it:

Setting it to give my body a break. Here's what Dr. Davis Liu, author of Stay Healthy, Live Longer, Spend Wisely recommended to me this week:

1. Get yourself a timer.
2. Set it for one hour.
3. At the end of the hour, do some shoulder shrugs, exercise your wrists, shoulders chest and back.
4. Practice a minute of deep breathing
5. Get back to work.

As he put it, "Is anything really going to fall apart if you leave your desk for five minutes?"

My answer was no.

I discovered that that small, antiquated piece of machinery could make my body happier and make my job less dangerous to my health.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, writers and editors reported 220 injuries on the job severe enough to miss at least one day of work in 2006, the most recent date for which statistics are available. None of them, oddly, were in the repetitive strain category (which tells me, more than anything, that writers aren't reporting them to their bosses, or, like us, they're self-employed). What I know from my own experience, though, is that when I sit for a long time and then stand up, my body feels welded in place, and my stress level grows.

I don't know much about Chinese medicine, but is sure feels like my qi is blocked. Just saying.

I did this yesterday--imperfectly--and it was a relief. Oddly, it served another purpose: It helped me be mindful of how I was spending my time and helped me track how I was spending my time.

Give it a shot today and see how it feels.