The Ups and Downs of Freelancing

Today in one fell blow (well, two), I lost about $650 worth of regular monthly income. I guess this illustrates the insecurity of the line of work I've currently opted for.

The first case was an incident of having dissimilar visions for what the job entailed, exacerbated by what I felt was somewhat unclear communication from the client about what she was looking for exactly. However, these things happen; sometimes a contractor gets hired on by a client and it turns out the two are just not compatible.

The second case was a job I got hired for on a two-week trial basis. After the two weeks were up, the site manager told me that he would like to keep me on and that I would hear a confirmation from the person in charge of hiring within a few days. He told me to keep working. Two weeks later, I suddenly got an email from her saying they were cutting back on expenses. So that's it and fair enough. I would love to work for this client again, as I felt we had a good relationship and I did quite enjoy the job.

The point of all this is that I suddenly find myself with very limited work. On the one hand, this is great, since Jason is getting here on Tuesday, so I might have more time to spend with him in the first few days. On the other hand, though, this means that I have to return to the job hunt, which I had been able to lay down thanks to the steady work I had. This will eat mostly unproductively into my time. It also cuts into my budget, of course, at a time when I'm already stretching my funds.

In happier news, I've been hired on a by a translation agency for German-French-English work. I did one project for them already and they were quite pleased with it (in fact, they found zero errors!). They've offered me another job, if they get it, which will be much longer and on a tighter deadline, but it will somewhat make up for the loss I suffered today. If I can get steady work from this agency, then I shouldn't have to spend too much time looking for other jobs.

Luckily, I'm still writing for World Record Label, which is one of my all-time favorites. For the next edition, I interviewed Rick Hayward of Hayward Amps.Check out my article on the 16th to learn more.