Home office
Yet Another Reason Why Freelancing Rocks
Mar 11th
We will soon be moving house.
When we signed the lease the other night, I was reminded just how easy it is for me, as a freelancer to pick up and move house. My only job-related requirements include:
- Space to have my office (basically space for my desk, and a closet where I can put my shelves and filing)
- Broadband internet coverage
That’s IT.
No stress about having to drive to work on routes already crowded with other commuters. No stress about driving distances.
However, the downside of course of being the kippy that works from home, is that the majority of the household packing and sorting will be left to me, because “after all I am home all day” as if that automatically means that I have time to sit around and blog paint my toenails.
But no, plenty to do, purge, clean, de-clutter, pack, sort through all those old textbooks and decide which ones to keep for posterity and reference. I suppose it’s a good thing that I get to do this, because I am pretty ruthless with getting rid of unwanted stuff, and if it were up to the other parental unit, we’d *still* be hanging onto stuff that I purged the last time we moved and that he hasn’t noticed yet…
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3 Hours Sleep
Feb 25th
6 new clients, 8 major new projects taken on and I am operating on 3 hours of sleep right now.
Somebody hand me the caffeine please!
It really feels like I need a week in my study without interruptions so that I can just jump right in with the proper planning required for handling this kind of work load.
Tempting too, to day dream of getting a motorhome and criss-crossing the USA, as some kind of digital nomad, earning and travelling at the same time.
There are a group of bloggers out there, their name escapes me know, I think it’s termed as “Location Independent”, but it’s really interesting to read about how provided you are in a place with fast and cheap broadband, you could work from virtually anywhere. Nice idea. Not sure about the details though.
Image Courtesy of Renee V on Flickr under a Creative Commons Attribution Licence
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Turmoil
Feb 16th
I am exceedingly grateful to be a work at home/freelance graphic designer.
Last week, my father passed away (rather expectedly, aged 81 from cancer). His funeral was on Friday.
The ensuing family feud (courtesy of my stupid brother) took place shortly after.
By the weekend I was over it, and getting on with my life. I took it slowly, and decided to really get ’stuck in’ to work on Monday. Except that in the early hours of Monday morning Reebok started running a fever. Monday night he decided to wake up just shy of midnight with mild croup.
Today, I had a major deadline, that I managed to keep.
There is no way, that I would have coped with the stupid stresses of the past 7 days if I was in some dead end corporate job somewhere in a dingy grey building, stuck in high heels all day.
I am convinced that being able to work in my bunny slippers is the ultimate gift!
Had I been prone to breakouts of eczema due to stress, then no, last week would not have been pretty.
However, I think that the light at the end of the tunnel is drawing near.
So despite my limbs feeling like lead, and trying to curb an overwhelming desire to pack my macbook, and camera and run away to Amsterdam, I’m doing okay.
Thanks for asking.
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Decking Out a New Office Space
Jan 23rd
We may have found a new rental today! After months of searching this new area that we like, we have found one that totally suits our purposes for the next 12 months at least.
But it does mean one thing.
The ‘M’ word.
You know.
“Moving”.
I don’t mind moving *so* much, in fact I wholeheartedly welcome the opportunity to ‘purge’ all unnecessary stuff that just seems to accumulate when you live in one place for more than a year. The good thing is also, that although we will be moving our home office as well (if we get the house) but that the room we will be using for our home office already has roller shades installed, so at least that’s one less thing we’ll have to worry about. In fact we have enough curtaining, and such to suit the new place, but I am seriously considering ditching our old furniture in favour of something a little more updated.
But first, I suppose we have to wait and see if our application is accepted! Fingers crossed!
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Freelancers: What are your best work hours?
Jan 13th
Freelancers, designers, wahms, tell me… What are your best work hours?
For the past week, I have been really focused on working on my network of blogs and on generating quality content. This means that a single blog post can take anything from 4-6 hours to do from start to finish.
Sometimes I work on them for longer, days even, designing some related custom graphics etc and generally tweaking and retweaking the layout until I’m happy with it.
In the past I have always found that getting up early, like around 4am has worked really well for me.
I get up, put the old fluffy slippers on and shuffle through to my home office and put in a solid 2-3 hours before my kids or husband even wake up.
This week however, I’ve just been too tired to get up in the morning, looking like I seriously need the best eye cream that the world has to offer, but of course the work still needs to be done.
My youngest son is back at school after the holiday break, but my older son is still here, and taking up a lot of my day time hours. I love being able to spend time with them, but as every freelancer or wahm will tell you, that it is a constant distraction. No matter how many times I take some time out with him, I’ll get back to work having set him up with a fun task to do, and bam, he’s right back at me clanking, shooting, spinning in the chair next to mine and just generally making noise directly around me and making it nearly impossible for to concentrate on a single word.
So I’ve been staying up late nights instead.
I’m finding it even easier than getting up early lately. Maybe because of the increased caffeine in my diet? I don’t know, but I’m getting to bed around 23h45 and last night was just after midnight. I feel better if I push myself to do this, because then I can just tumble into bed afterwards, it’s not like then I have to get out of my pj’s and rush headlong into my day.
As for fun activities, today I set my son up with MS Paint, on my husbands old PC laptop.
I was *astounded* at what he came up with. I showed him a couple of the tools and how to ‘fill’ and then left him to it so that I could get back to work.
After about 20 minutes of blessed, peaceful silence, I heard the words, “Look here Mommy!” and I turned from my iMac to see what he’d made.
How old do you think he is?
He-is-just-four-years-old.
Did you see the smoke coming out of the chimney and everything?
Four.
I think I’m going to be out of job in a few months at this rate.
Kids, they amaze you all the time.
So back to my original question…what hours of the day do *you* work at your optimum capacity?
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Design Wiblet of the Day
Jan 8th
This is a header that I designed for Photo Super Hero, which is a photography website dedicated to bringing you news about photography, great products, helpful advice all in one place. It’s been touted as ‘way less stuffy than other photography sites’ and I suppose that is because it’s written from the perspective of a photographer, who started by buying a DSLR and figuring everything out by becoming self-taught. That advice is passed on through the posts in order to help others.
Aside from that wiblet of the day, I have a ton of projects to get to including designing another blogger background for a client, as well as a business card mock-up. I look forward to when I can present my designs electronically to a client in person, in a swish ultimate mac office, complete with LED screens on
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Greetings from My Corner of Africa
Dec 29th
When I sit down at the computer to do design work, I’m amazed how much I rely on space. Head space that is.
Sure, I work with two little kids at home, so I need to be prepared for distractions, and they’re par for the course. I’ve become accustomed to having to leave tasks, to return to them, once the offspring are otherwise entertained, or asleep. What I am finding difficult right now, is the other parental unit, is currently on vacation days (and will be until the 4th of January) but I can’t seem to make it clear to him that simply because he is on vacation, doesn’t mean that I am able to drop everything, participate in every conversation and basically not do any work at all.
If I hear, “Are you on the computer AGAIN?” ONE-MORE-TIME, I may just run to the nearest hillside and break out into a fiendish blood curdling scream.
On another note, because of my freelancing status, and the argument I mention above how, when you’re a freelancer you’re *never* on holiday? Well there are ways of planning to supplement your income while you are on holiday, if you plan ahead. I generally have my finger in several pies, including a spot of online marketing, some web content production and numerous other avenues.
A new one which I’ve just discovered, which I wish I had found shortly after leaving university was a site that allows you to sell textbooks. Imagine how much cash you could regain by selling some of your old text books. When I was at university staying in residence we generally went and found a first year (or they found us) that was studying the same course, who was usually a willing buyer of our second hand stuff, but a site like this would have been so much easier to deal with. Click, ship, ka ching. I like that kind of ease of use and efficiency.
One thing I’ve noticed about myself is that I tend to use the services of business that make a real effort with their online presence (probably because I understand of the great deal of effort that it entails). Just the other day when I was shopping for a new iMac, I found a local (!) online shop that had 24/7 live chat (very rare in South Africa) and were able to answer my questions about stock levels on the spot. NICE. I will definitely send some business their way soon.
On that note, I hope you have all had a peaceful and fun festive season (whether Earthbound or not) ha ha, and I hope you’re looking forward to the New Year as much as I am.
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So Many Decisions
Dec 11th
We rent our current house.
We’re not ready to buy in this market yet, and of course long term our plan it to emigrate.
However in the short term, given that the 2010 Soccer World Cup is coming to our shores, *now* does seem like a good time to make a good property investment. One of the things that I miss about ‘owning’ a home, is the ability to customise it to our own desired specifications. To choose the wall colours, the kitchen cabinets the floor tiles and other items. Changing simple things like electrical fittings, and even just door handles can make SUCH a huge difference to the look and feel of a room.
I can’t wait until our long term plans come to fruition, so that we can really start ‘living our way’ again, rather than just existing in our current state!
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When all is well, sometimes it's not…
Oct 11th
After this week, I could really use a mazatlan all inclusive holiday!
It started with my Macbook being unceremoniously thrust to the floor by my 18month old toddler (shame, as heartbroken as I was I couldn’t scold him, he didn’t understand what he’d done), and with me needing to begin the insurance claims process (yes – thank god for insurance, which is money for nothing unless something like this happens and you need it!) in order to either repair or replace the machine.
Personally I’m holding out for replacing because the sum that it is insured for, is the same as the cost of a new 20″ iMac!
I could really use the screen realestate, rather than the mobility right now.
So I made do with borrowed machines this week, for deadline after deadline that popped up out of nowhere. I’m so glad I managed to nail everything too!
Oh well, we’ll see what happens this week!
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Working On the Road
Sep 28th
With the advent of PDAs, it really has made the lives of freelancers like myself *so* much easier.
Just recently I upgraded my cell phone contract to a Blackberry device, and suffice it to say that the availability of push email and unlimited internet access has helped me to save countless hours which formerly was ‘time wasted’.
Doing the ’school run’ in the past used to suck at least an hour out of my work time, now I arrive a bit early, and I immediately use that time to go through my latest emails, make voice notes about any thoughts I’m having on current projects. Of course if I don’t feel like working, then it becomes my Mp3 player of choice and with 2GB of memory it basically holds my entire library of music right there.
Oh yeah, and it’s a phone too… guess I forgot to mention that!
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