Why go freelance? For me, there are a number of very good reasons.
I did it for flexibility, for my family, for my sanity, and the more I dig into what my business is and what I’m about, the more I realise I did it because I want to keep achieving. I want to get better at the things I love, I want to have impact, and I want to progress.
When I was very little, I went to an incredible primary school that was a utopia of pupil autonomy and ideas. If you finished your work, you could do whatever you liked. I lasered in – by lunchtime every day I’d finished everything. So my afternoons were spent setting up a school newspaper, fundraising and designing new art for the playground, making up plays, writing books, or just hanging out in the library with my friends ?
It was heaven on earth. Setting up projects, making things work, learning, failing, trying again. On my own terms (or collaboratively, when I could persuade my peers to join in). The only limit was my own imagination.
I was lucky. The eighties were great, weren’t they? All this, and we got Duran Duran too.
Freelancing comes with a lot more financial pressure and a lot more fear. But there’s a touch of that work hard/play hard vibe that I’m rediscovering. I’m remembering how to look for the horizon and stop staring at the ground. It feels exciting.
P.S. Finally got the @annieridout book – what a beauty ? Can’t wait to get stuck in.
[Cross-posted to @penthemighty]