Good article on Freelance Switch by
Susan Johnston about balancing freelance work with a full time job.
Lord knows I tried for about a year. It was only after trying to take care of a hosting issue for my client with a local hosting company that only had tech support during "banker's hours" (?!), that I realized that trying to cram commuting, raising a child, having a 9 hour a day office job and trying to start my own web design business required approximately 36 hours a day instead of the allotted 24. Of course the office job was the time thief, not to mention the time (2.5 hours a day) and $$ ($250 a month) it was costing me. So I started trolling Craig's List and quickly found a job in Salem that was not only "flex-time" but also required graphic/web design skills.
After a brief "honeymoon" (pot-luck lunches! kibbitzing encouraged!), I quickly realized that the term flex-time actually meant, "you can only work the hours we can afford to pay you for" so when my husband told me that the local film industry was in full swing again, I braced myself and went into work to hand in my notice. My co-worker was currently fighting being deported back to Eastern Europe and I knew that both of us vanishing from the office would leave my boss with no one else to answer the phones but her senile, but lovable, golden retriever.
Fortunately, (depending how you look at it) she had already decided that in order to afford the salary of a trainee to replace the soon-to-be-deported tech support/salesperson, she would have to let me go and that was that. I was a (guilt-free!) freelancer again.
It's been almost a year now since that day and while there are days where my husband works 18 hours and I am left at the mercy of a tiny diva-in-training, there are other days where he takes her to some indoors playground for 6 hours followed by a 2 hour grocery-shopping trip and I am free to work with no tiny hands pulling me like the Death Star's tractor beam towards the playdough table. It's not yet the ideal home office situation where I can shut the door and be in my own little Ikea-furnished kingdom, but how many companies let you watch
"Oswald" while you work?
Jennsweb fun factoid: Henry the Penguin on "Oswald" is voiced by
David Lander of "Laverne and Shirley" fame.
File Under: Wish I'd Had This 2 Years Ago
