Just the other day she said to me, “…I mean, you have to have a real job, 9-5.” and I was a little stunned. She tries to understand, but I think that it is possibly the ‘too good to be true’ factor cutting things short. Then again it could be the fact that I do my freelancing on the side, so obviously the income doesn’t appear great. No matter the case, this article hits it on the nose. Why is a job only a job as long as you are somewhere else, doing it for someone else?

I feel your pain in that people do not seem to understand that what I do is a “real job”. I have relatives calling for help because their computer is slow. Friends calling to see “whats up”. Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses knocking on my door to ask if I want to hear the good news. Yet through all this I am trying to work. I am a developer. I write code.

When getting into the discussions about work, people assume that I am somehow scamming the system, and that I spend all day surfing the web. I’ve learned that I cannot feel any guilt for the fact that I get up, throw on a tee shirt and lounge pants and stagger downstairs to my office for work. Because I don’t have to wear khakis and a polo shirt, or even (horror-of-horrors) a suit, it doesn’t make my job any less “real”, Just as if I were in the office, I can’t just drop everything and run. The work needs to get done, and I’m expected, and being paid, to do it.

I understand your frustration at making the world understand your job, and want all the freelancers to know that you aren’t alone here, and that some of us “Corporate” types do indeed understand.

I’ll definitely be submitting more columns to Freelance Switch, and there are kinda-daily updates over at BlondeChampage.com. How wonderful to have found new drinking friends. Again, I am humbled by your warm welcome.

I can’t wait to read more.