Journal Entry
The hard truths of freelancing/writing
One of my favorite websites, WebWorkerDaily, featured a look at the negatives of being a freelancer today. Of course, they’re very much similar to the downsides of being a writer.
The three things:
Every Day Off Costs Money
It’s true. If you ever meet writers, they’re always ‘on.’ Losing time to sickness costs me money. Vacation: lost money. WWD talks about the amazing thing that is two weeks off from your job. That’s something to miss, but what I mainly missed were sick days, as well as governmental protection due to losing large swathes of time off work due to unforeseen illness.
While being my own boss mean that I didn’t have to call in and prove I was sick to lose a week to the flu, I felt the pinch on the pocketbook earlier this year while recovering from my hospitalizations. Lots of lost productivity.
Getting Banks interested in you is harder
Before I quit my dayjob I got a line of credit for a year’s salary set up. Just in case. I’ve never touched it. But it was recently canceled (without notice) due to lack of use. Based on a quick conversation, I learned that I could access a fraction of that same line of credit if I reapplied due to being self employed and ‘risky.’ Joy.
Taxes, expenses, and insurance are way more complicated, and up to you
The same kind of insurance you may pay $300-$400 for is a multiple more expensive, or if you have preconditions, you’re uninsurable. Taxes and finances need handled, which take up a lot of time.
The last two don’t hit me as hard. As you may have noticed, I have a system now for taxes and expenses and finances. I’m lucky that I’m married to someone with a regular dayjob, so our insurance comes from there. If not, I’d be living somewhere with non-republican approaches to health insurance in order to make a go of it.
Getting banks interested in me is something that’s annoying, but I’ve slowly come around to a cash only sort of lifestyle approach anyway.
But no matter what, that first point is still the one that needs negotiated. One thing I’m trying to remember is that time off is good for the human being, and I’m hoping next year to take a real vacation…
Filed under the topic Journal on November 18th 2009 at 5:44 pm. You can subscribe to the RSS feed for this entry to keep track of comments. You can also use to trackback.
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1. Matt Forbeck on Nov 18th, 2009 at 6:17 pm
Totally agree with all this. I do manage to take time off for family vacations, but it’s rare that I don’t bring my laptop along and sneak in work whenever I can.
2. Tobias Buckell on Nov 18th, 2009 at 6:29 pm
Matt: me either
3. spyscribbler on Nov 18th, 2009 at 7:16 pm
I feel guilty when I take a day off, and that rare. But after, what, (I did not just have to use my fingers to figure out how old I am) fourteen years of self-employment, I’m used to it. And now I’m only working writing, as opposed to writing and teaching and performing. That’s a huge relief. I don’t know how writers who have full-time jobs do it.
Health insurance would be nice, though. Yeah, I could use that about right now.
4. Steve Burnap on Nov 18th, 2009 at 8:30 pm
I was a freelance programmer for six years. Makes the vacations and sick days all the sweeter now.
The thing that got me most was that it was much harder to sit at home and just relax. You could always be working.
5. Catherine Shaffer on Nov 18th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
I experienced a huge boost in productivity and enthusiasm after taking a long vacation this year–for the first time in 1.5 years. It’s definitely worth rearranging the work. I had gotten to the point where I was slogging through robotically, pretty much numb and not getting any sense of reward from the work.
6. Mark Terry on Nov 20th, 2009 at 9:35 am
I struggle with the vacation thing and I think it’s getting to be something of an issue. Last spring I went to Disney World with the marching band as a chaperone. Didn’t bring my laptop. Only connection was e-mail on my iPhone and for the business e-mails I did get I typically responded with, “I’m at Disney World with 150 high school students. I’ll get back to you on Tuesday if I survive.” But, in fact, I think part of why the trip was so great for me was because I totally got away from work. I tried to do that when I took a week’s vacation up north in August, but it didn’t quite work out, I had to do some work. But I’m definitely finding that burnout is a potentially real possibility and I’d better figure out how to take a week off without working. I’m going to try between Christmas and New Year’s this year, but we’ll see.
7. Phiala on Nov 26th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Having a day job absolutely helps with a number of things, including steady source of income and health insurance. But anyone working and trying to write or run any other enterprise on the side has exactly the same problem with vacation days.
I work evenings and weekends, and Thanksgiving, and the day after Thanksgiving, and when I’m away.
Time off? Heh.