10 Truths All Freelancers Will Understand (And What You Can Learn From Them)
Everyone wants to be their own boss and make their own hours, but to accomplish that you need to start a company, make it successful and then hire competent, trustworthy people to run it while you’re off playing golf or appearing on Shark Tank. Sound like too much work? Here’s an alternate solution: just freelance!
Freelancing allows you to be your own boss. You can work wherever you want and whenever you want. Well, kind of. You do have bosses because you have to ask people to let you work for them, so you don’t always control when you work but the freedom that freelancing allows can still be a welcome break from office life. However, every freelancer knows that freedom comes with a price.
You Don’t Talk To Anyone All Day
On the surface, working from home is the dream, but after a few weeks, it hits you that the only person you talk to all day is the deli guy who takes your sandwich order. When you finally meet up with friends at a bar, you’re at a disadvantage – everyone else has been talking all day. Even if it was just office small talk, it’s like they spent the day practicing and doing warm-ups for real conversation. You show up and either start ranting incoherently about what you did that day or you have trouble speaking like it’s 9 a.m., you just got to the office, and you still haven’t had that first cup of coffee.
Writing At A Coffee Shop Sucks
Sometimes home isn’t the most productive place for work, so you’ll go to a coffee shop. For the price of a small coffee, you can use all the toilet paper and Wi-Fi you want. It’s like an office! Except that you eventually feel like you’re taking advantage of the place so you start buying the $10 sandwiches with one slice of turkey on them. Or you show up and someone is sitting at your favorite table near the outlet. Or their Wi-Fi is down and you’re stuck eating your overpriced sandwich at a crappy table with no Wi-Fi and a computer you can’t even charge.
You’re Always “Just Checking In”
You get very good at typing the words “just checking in.” There’s no fun way to follow up on an e-mail that wasn’t answered, but this seems like the best option, right? At least it’s better than writing, “hey, just wondering if I’ll make money doing this?” or, “hey, do you know when I get paid for that thing I did a while ago? Not that I need the money, but seriously, do you know when that check will go through?”
Your Payment Schedule Varies
Having regular freelance work at the same company is great because you’ll actually get paid with some sort of consistency. If you don’t work regularly for one company, who knows?! Maybe you’ll be paid in two weeks (unlikely), a month (more likely) or you weren’t set up for direct deposit and the check was mailed to you but never actually reached your mailbox (also possible but probably a lie).
Alternately Rich And Poor
Because of the random pay schedule, you’ll go through times when your bank account is horribly low but there is the potential that a thousand dollars will show up in your account any day. Then, that money suddenly arrives, along with other checks you weren’t anticipating so early – you’re rich! Then, a month and a half of no checks goes by and suddenly you’re just scraping by… How did that happen?
Alternately Bored And Busy
Your workload will fluctuate as much as your pay rate. One week you’ll have nothing to do and assuming you’re not stressing about not having enough work to do, maybe you can go see a movie or something. Then, one week later you get a bunch of pitches accepted and you’re suddenly overwhelmed by the amount of work on your plate, longing for last week’s open schedule.
Free Time Doesn’t Always Feel Free
Sometimes the freedom that freelancing allows is amazing. Want to play pitch and putt on a Tuesday afternoon? Go ahead! But you’ll also spend a lot of your free time thinking that you should be working or you should be pitching to editors even if you don’t necessarily need the money. When there’s no real difference between a Saturday and a Tuesday it’s easy to feel like you’re just taking money from yourself when you’re killing time watching Netflix.
Pitching For The Sake Of Pitching
Getting a pitch accepted can be great, unless it’s something that you’re not really invested in and only pitched it because you felt the need to pitch >something. Now you’re stuck working on something that you may not like or even know much about. Whatever work you would normally put in now includes using Google and Wikipedia just to wrap your head around what you pitched.
Taxes Are A Nightmare
You have to think about tax season all year round. After lunch with a friend, you’ll wonder if you can deduct your hamburger because you kind of talked about work for a little bit. Then you have to remember to save the receipt somewhere. You’ll need to remember that you got paid $600 for something you did the previous January. And if you don’t get taxes taken out of your paychecks, you better have been putting some away. Even worse, you could be paying taxes quarterly and have the joy of dealing with receipts and miscellaneous paperwork four times a year.
The No Dress Code Thing
Many workplaces don’t require a suit and tie anymore, but few let you show up in pajama pants and a stained sweatshirt. Those days when you don’t get out of last night’s PJs can be pretty great, but if you’re not careful, they’ll consume you. Actually getting dressed, showering, and shaving like you’re going to an office is a great way to prep yourself for actually doing work.
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