Koobazaur's Domain

Alarm buzzes as you hit snooze on the early Wednesday morning. Then you remember; when you freelance, every morning is a Wednesday morning.

Most imagine lazily waking up at 11am, busting a few hours of work in your PJs, and topping off the productive day with a beer. All without the need to leave one’s comfortable couch! When you first start working from home, it feels like a vacation. Three years later, it’s routine.

Every day is a Wednesday

The big allure of work from home is making your own schedule. I can work at 10pm if I want to! I can take Tuesday off! The world is yours! Until the greatest benefit of freelance becomes its greatest downfall.

Does it matter if it’s Monday or Saturday? No, because you make your own schedule. Does it matter if it’s 2am or 2pm? No, because you don’t have to clock in at 9am. Oh it’s President’s Day? I didn’t notice…

Without routine, there is no flow of time. Days blend in seamlessly. I’ve been puzzled to find stores closed, forgetting it was the 4th of July. When any day can be a holiday, no day is a holiday. It’s all groundhog day.

In an ironic twist you go back to a regular weekly, 9-5 schedule, just to keep your sanity. The flexibility is still there if you need it, but you really need to learn how to “use it properly.”

You have free time. Others don’t.

The flexibility also flounders for extroverted types. Yes, I can call it quits at 1pm on a Thursday and… do what exactly? All your friends are at work. The bars are closed. Everyone you meet is waiting for 5pm to hit.

You begin to miss the trivial watercooler conversations, simply craving human interaction. Once again you realize a typical 9-5 routine is best because that is how the rest of the society operates. Sure there’s books, and movies, and games and this and that. But if you are an extrovert like me, you soon grow bored of spending all your free time alone.

You are your own boss. The worst boss.

Setting your own hours gives you tremendous flexibility… and responsibility. Finding balance takes time. You could always work more. You could always work less. It is easy to slip both ways.

I’ve had weeks pushing 12hr days, waking up at 5 or 6am to send critical emails, and skipping my weekends to finish a project. “Just one more hour…” – it’s like a horribly twisted version of playing Civilization. It becomes addictive.

And then, it crushes you. You only leave your house to pick up more rice and chicken, you have no social life, only more money. Money you’re not spending.

And I’ve had weeks where my hours slowly dwindled, clocking after half days, then quarts. You become lazy, you become complacent. You feel guilty, yet too demotivated to work more.

Neither side is pleasant, but if you’re not careful, you may end up oscillating between them. Because you can really be your own worst boss.

The non-work bullshit and costs

With a typical job, your morning commute is probably the greatest non-work peeve. Working from home you may not deal with the traffic, but plenty other annoyances make up for it.

There’s time spent on self-promotion, seeking new leads, and analyzing projects to draft quotes. Half of those will not land you a job. Then there’s extra hours each month spent tracking, preparing and sending invoices. God forbid you end with an unpaying client you need to hunt down with multiple reminders, phone calls, and strongly-worded legal letters.

Eventually you consult an accountant because fuck doing those taxes. You run to your bank every other week. And you have to keep tabs on expenses because some months you earn three times as much, others three times as little. And let’s not forget you’re already paying double tax, thanks to the self-employment portion.

Oh, and health insurance! Or lack thereof – you you don’t get it. You have to find an individual plan on your own, usually paying much more for far shittier coverage. The joy.

All these are required to run a good business, so they are technically work. Work you do not get paid for. Work you lose money on. And now you know why freelancing rates are so much higher.

Silver Lining

Of course, if freelance was all doom and gloom I wouldn’t be tourting myself with it. Or maybe I’m just a masochist?

Thanks to my flexible job I nicely augmented my student income back in college. I got to live in North Ireland, visit my grandparents in Poland, and spend 3 months in India, all without needing to take vacation time off. And, most importantly, freelancing gave me the time and flexibility to pursue my true passions – cinematography and game development.