Photo by Just Add Light.

My youngest nephew, Will, is on the cusp of two years old—that adorably maddening tipping point between babydom and full-functioning Big Boy.  Sometimes he struggles to communicate his needs, at which point he defaults to a full-throated, full-fake cry; sometimes, he’s clearly and efficiently out-sentencing most reality show contestants.

And sometimes he switches from one to the other within no interval between the two.  Recently he was struggling to open a toy, and, seeing a facsimile of an Official Adult nearby in me, he wailed aloud.  I bent down to unfasten the latches for him. I might not be willing to endure labor, breastfeeding, and adolescence, but I can unlock the plastic stops on a Fisher-Price barn. Most of the time.

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Photo by annia316.

Whether you’re a part-time graphic designer or full-time web content writer, a freewheeling blog consultant or an outside-the-box marketing genius, you jumped into freelancing for one simple reason – and it wasn’t simply “the money.” There’s no doubt money was a motivator, but what you were really after was freedom. Freedom from a day job, freedom from financial stress, freedom to work wherever and whenever you want to … but are you really on the path to enjoy that freedom, or are you just fooling yourself?

Freelancing Should Be A Springboard, Not a Treadmill

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Photo by Robert Scoble.

Recently, Logan Strain wrote at Freelance Switch about the four reasons he doesn’t want to be a freelancer anymore. It’s probably true that most people are not born to be a freelancer — many just fall into this career and are happy with it. Others find it’s not for them, despite what they thought. But can you go back to salaried work?

Vangelis Bibakis of Mainframe.gr offers some great freelancing tips in an unnumbered article dating back to December 2006. However, there’s one point I can’t agree with, from hard experience. It’s in the one titled “Be ready to fail” (numbered with “θ“, theta.) and it says, “If by any chance you see things looking black, don’t despair. You can always switch back to a ‘proper’ job at anytime.” Continue Reading

Image by thp365.

Was this you once?

Is this you now?

When I was working as a technical and marketing writer in the corporate universe, I endured quarterly “team luncheons,” which consisted of long sandwiches featuring very sad lettuce and a conference room in which we were told what a great company we were and the many ways in which we, those of us who comprised the company, sucked at our jobs.

These to-dos weren’t technically mandatory, of course, but when the send-all email hit the inboxes with a closing sentence consisting of, “The CEO looks forward to seeing all of you there”, it was clear that it wasn’t the brightest idea to be found at one’s desk during the Team Hour, scrolling through vintage Atari cartridges on eBay.

My strategy was to nip in at the very last second, which usually meant that all the uncomfortable folding chairs were taken and I was left—oh, gosh darn it!—to stand in the hallway next to the folding table with the lettuce, which frankly had a more winning personality than many of the office people. I braced myself up against the wall, faced the ice bucket, and was free to not feign raptures over PowerPoint clip art. Continue Reading

One of my many day jobs — among them were bodyguarding, selling roses in bars, and sports reporting for the American Thoroughbred industry — was teaching writing at the college level. Faced with a roomful of pilots at an aeronautical university who really, really did not wish to be bothered with comma splices, I threw out the textbook the English department gave me with its carefully chosen, PC-balanced literary selections and ordered Laura Hillenbrand’s Seabiscuit instead. If these captains-in-training were going to learn how to love words, they were going to do it with a horse story written by a girl.

They soon realized that the book was really about a man clinging to an outside power to free him — just as they felt every time they climbed into a cockpit. Hillenbrand describes Seabiscuit’s jockey, the constantly injured Red Pollard, as a “caged bird.” The pilots and I talked about that phrase a great deal, and although they eyed me as their own jailer when I handed out essay assignments, I never told them about my own corporate cage. Continue Reading