One of the things they don't warn you about when you decide to quit your job and go freelance is that all people hear when you tell them that is, "I quit my job." In their imagination, you are retired and you now spend your days watching soap operas and surfing the internet.
They also think that you have no schedule or time constraints. While that is true to a certain extent in my case, what I do have to do is block out a certain amount of time every single day, including weekends, for either writing or research, or both. If it's research, I often have dozens of facts I'm tracking down, clues to follow up, and documentation to write. If I stop to run an errand or answer a social call, I can lose the trail. It sometimes takes as much time to pick it back up again as it did to find it in the first place. If it's writing, I may be in the process of typing out the best work I've ever done. (Hey, it could happen!) But a quick trip to the store can erase every word that was bubbling out of my brain as fast as I could type.
What's probably worse is that I have to battle my own, very short, attention span. I can start the day at the keyboard, firmly resolved to do whatever work is at hand, when suddenly I remember I need to shop for a good price on a flight, like I did this morning. I found a good price, but I had to sacrifice an hour of writing time to do it. For a person who frequently gets distracted just putting on her socks, this is a challenge. I'm working on staying on task, but it's entirely self-driven. When I was working for the man, the job at hand usually drove me in an orderly way. Now I'm working for my...ooh, shiny!
I know this post probably sounds like a big, whiny complaint. It definitely falls into the category of first-world problems of a very lucky sort. I am vastly, overwhelmingly grateful for this opportunity to carve out the life I've always wanted to live. I'm also very blessed to have wonderful people in my life to talk to and care for. Mostly, I'm writing this to myself as a reminder that I'm not a lady of leisure. If anything, I'm much busier now than I ever was when I had a regular job to use as an excuse not to do things.
There's a certain learning curve when it comes to acquiring the self-discipline to be regularly productive on one's own, and I'm still smack in the middle of it. I have to learn how to say, "No, not now, I'm writing," and schedule interruptions around that time, just as I would if I had a regular job. I also have to tell myself that. As I've been writing this, I've thought of at least ten other things I could do right this minute instead of what I'm doing. It's often all I can do to keep my butt firmly planted in this chair and my browser firmly planted in this window.
That whine dispensed with, my glamorous life has me back home from a very productive research trip for www.findinghenry.com. There really is some glamor in my life, since I got to go to Florida last week. Now I just need to decide if I'm going to dive straight into organizing the research and getting another post written, or finding the motorcycle jack and building a yellow submarine (yes, really!). Decisions, decisions...ooh, shiny!
They also think that you have no schedule or time constraints. While that is true to a certain extent in my case, what I do have to do is block out a certain amount of time every single day, including weekends, for either writing or research, or both. If it's research, I often have dozens of facts I'm tracking down, clues to follow up, and documentation to write. If I stop to run an errand or answer a social call, I can lose the trail. It sometimes takes as much time to pick it back up again as it did to find it in the first place. If it's writing, I may be in the process of typing out the best work I've ever done. (Hey, it could happen!) But a quick trip to the store can erase every word that was bubbling out of my brain as fast as I could type.
What's probably worse is that I have to battle my own, very short, attention span. I can start the day at the keyboard, firmly resolved to do whatever work is at hand, when suddenly I remember I need to shop for a good price on a flight, like I did this morning. I found a good price, but I had to sacrifice an hour of writing time to do it. For a person who frequently gets distracted just putting on her socks, this is a challenge. I'm working on staying on task, but it's entirely self-driven. When I was working for the man, the job at hand usually drove me in an orderly way. Now I'm working for my...ooh, shiny!
I know this post probably sounds like a big, whiny complaint. It definitely falls into the category of first-world problems of a very lucky sort. I am vastly, overwhelmingly grateful for this opportunity to carve out the life I've always wanted to live. I'm also very blessed to have wonderful people in my life to talk to and care for. Mostly, I'm writing this to myself as a reminder that I'm not a lady of leisure. If anything, I'm much busier now than I ever was when I had a regular job to use as an excuse not to do things.
There's a certain learning curve when it comes to acquiring the self-discipline to be regularly productive on one's own, and I'm still smack in the middle of it. I have to learn how to say, "No, not now, I'm writing," and schedule interruptions around that time, just as I would if I had a regular job. I also have to tell myself that. As I've been writing this, I've thought of at least ten other things I could do right this minute instead of what I'm doing. It's often all I can do to keep my butt firmly planted in this chair and my browser firmly planted in this window.
That whine dispensed with, my glamorous life has me back home from a very productive research trip for www.findinghenry.com. There really is some glamor in my life, since I got to go to Florida last week. Now I just need to decide if I'm going to dive straight into organizing the research and getting another post written, or finding the motorcycle jack and building a yellow submarine (yes, really!). Decisions, decisions...ooh, shiny!
