Greetings and happy Monday, everyone. I’d like to write about a few things that have been on my heart lately that I think might help some freelancers who just feel “stuck”. As I am sure many of you know, I have been a full-time freelancer since June of last year. In just two weeks I will be celebrating my one year independence anniversary.
It took quite a bit to get to this point. Let’s rewind a bit, shall we? Two months ago I confidently boarded a plane to Salt Lake City; ready to begin my new life in a better city. I left with access to seven different telecommute companies. One by one these gigs dried up…quickly. Keep in mind that I was only gone for two months. First, my best and most lucrative gig, ShopWiki through Yovia dried up within just a couple of weeks of my move. Another one just stopped talking to me. CL was giving me trouble about my account, which forced me to spend over $60 just to have only two working accounts (3 were defective). One of my private clients stopped calling and I was left destitute with hardly any work and hardly any money.
On the way back to Tampa I was incredibly depressed. I couldn’t believe that once again I failed to leave the one place on earth I did not want to live. When I stared down at the oil in the gulf, it made me think even more about how the bottom just fell out – without any warnings or signs. Then I stopped and thought “Why is that oil in the gulf?”. Desperation and poor planning. Just as the oil companies had been desperate to find new sources of oil and had planned poorly, so too had I been so desperate to leave this place and planned my move very poorly. While I may have left with enough work, I needed better backups. I also should have and could have sought out cheaper housing. I was paying far too much for the room that I was staying in from March to May. I could have saved about $400 had I moved in with someone else.
Knowing this now, I am planning more thoroughly for the next move out of here: permanently. Now, don’t get me wrong. Had I kept at it out there I would have been able to support myself just fine. It wasn’t finances that brought me back this time. Rather, it was a sense that I needed to bring closure to the people in my life that will continue to live here. These people deserve nothing short of my full, honesty and that is something that I was too afraid to give them when I left. Not only that, but I promised my significant other that I would stay by his side no matter what and that we would leave together. He graduates in mid-July. We are both trying our best to move in mid-to-late August. We’ll have our own apartment again in September.
Now, I am sure that everyone knows how I feel about DS. I think $15 is not enough to write an article twice. They always, always, always want rewrites. Literally, everything gets sent back for stupid reasons. I thought I’d try them just once more because I really could use the extra funds since travel does have a tendency to drain your wallet. However, when I got a silly rewrite request (no surprise there, right?) I realized that I was done with that place once and for all. The stress, the headaches, and the pay is certainly not worth it. I realized that I had a lot more avenues than I thought I did and those are the avenues that I am going to explore in my second year of full-time freelancing. Places like DS really undermine the spirit of freelancing and I am not willing to give up that spirit. It is my spirit. It is your spirit. It is our spirit. Never again will I work for such a soul-destroying place like DS.
Recently, I came to a puzzling crossroads. Being a young professional is certainly not easy. Being a young professional freelancer is even harder but its the only life I know. Its the only life I want. I thought about my childhood dream of becoming a mangaka (comic book artist) and realized that such dreams are not so far fetched after all. I finished the first book of my series about two weeks ago and it’s going through the final editing stages. After its published, my boyfriend and I will be touring conventions all over North America to promote the book. I am so thankful to all of the people in my life who have made my dreams – to become a writer and a mangaka possible.
Dear readers, you can do this too. Never let anyone tell you that your dreams are too far-fetched. I am not going to lie to you and tell you that the path I took was easy. It isn’t. There’s no paycheck every week, no guarantee of what tomorrow will bring. However, when you think about it; all of life is actually that way. If you want to have an online store, be a writer, be a graphic designer, get out of a dead-end job: now is the time to do it. What do you have to lose? If anything, you have everything to gain.