What does it actually mean to be a freelancer?

I have a habit of taking jobs that are incredibly difficult to explain to others. My first was in a cemetery, my second at a greeting card company, and my current is most nebulous of all—a freelancer.

The trouble with freelancing is that at its surface, everyone knows what it is, but as soon as you start talking logistics, it all becomes rather hazy. Freelancing is a term that is so vast that it covers the same sort of range that something like “salaried” or “part-time job” might, and just like these terms, one person’s freelancing will likely look vastly different from another’s.

Honestly, the easiest way I’ve found to explain the whole freelance thing is to keep in mind the following characteristics that freelancers tend to have in common:

• Self-Employment: Though most freelancers work with companies, we are not that company’s employees. This means that they typically aren’t responsible for us when it comes to things like taxes and healthcare typically, but also means they don’t get to dictate details like hours.

• Project-Based or Time-Based Work: A good full-time employee can generally expect to keep their job indefinitely. While they can certainly be laid off (and many are), most employers offer benefits like transition help or extended final paychecks to soften such instances. On the flip side, freelancers are generally hired for a period of time or a specific project and may or may not be hired again. There is never severance or a guarantee of future work with freelancing.

• Multiple Clients: You certainly can be a freelancer with a single, well-paying client, but the vast majority work with at least a few different clients.

What Freelancing Looks Like For Me

Working From Anywhere

It’s no secret to anyone who knows me that I absolutely love working from home. I can set the temperature and noise level to my optimal focus environment, sit any way that I want to without judgment, and hang out with my dog and cat all day. I can also take my work on the go, which gives me the flexibility to travel where and when I want no matter what’s on my plate.

Working My Chosen Schedule

As a freelancer, I choose my own hours. I have almost no meetings, and can work as early or as late as I want. I can take a nap in the middle of the day when I’m tired and can work a 4 day week when I feel like it. During busier peaks, I might be working extra hours (but only when I deem it worth it for the extra pay), and during waiting periods I can literally spend half a day playing video games just because I want to. As someone who hates crowds and lines, I can run errands whenever the store will be least busy and instead get work done during times of day when the errands would have taken longer/been more effort.

Waiting

Freelancing is about 95% waiting (at least according to my impatient ADHD brain) because you’ll often be waiting on pitch approval, waiting on shipments, waiting on answers, waiting on edits, or even waiting on pay. Waiting is easily the part of freelancing that I hate the most, but also one that I have learned to live with.

Juggling Multiple Projects (and Clients) at Once

At any one time, my goal is always to have some pitches out with editors, some pitches in the works on my end, some projects in testing mode (which often means waiting on product shipments and questions), and some projects in writing progress. I have quite a few different clients and on average I’m working with about three companies (and up to six editors) at one time. I may have one project from each person I work with or may have several projects from a single person. Each new day is a little different.

Working at My Own Pace

I have a reputation for getting work done lightning fast, which I don’t say to brag so much as to explain why this point is so appealing to me personally. In my last job, I often found myself waiting on my coworkers and collaborators for their part of the project. Being a freelancer means that while I do have to wait for a lot of things, most of the time once the work has been approved, I can just go! It’s immensely satisfying and lets me get through far more than I would be able to in a differently structured sort of job.

Finding New Opportunities

Freelancing is unique in the sense that you control your own career much more than you ever could in a full-time job. True, no one is there to mentor you or offer you obvious career progression, but you’re also never going to find yourself stuck in a dead end job. Ultimately, freelancing takes a huge amount of perseverance, self-advocacy, and confidence because it is an exercise in getting rejected again and again and again (and again). However, by always looking for new clients and new opportunities, freelancing always feels fresh and exciting with the promise of what could be just around the corner.

Doing Actual Work

One of the interesting things about freelancing is realizing just how much time the corporate world wastes on things like meetings. Early on, I realized I could easily research, write, edit, and turn in an entire article in the same amount of time that I might have previously spent on a morning of meetings with my old full-time job. Though in some ways, I spend more time on the business side of freelancing than I expected, in other ways, it’s nice to have much more dedicated time to actually work!

Ready to try the freelancing thing? Want to learn more?

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