I was wrestling with whether to complete and publish an ebook which collects together some of the blog posts I wrote at the start of last year. I asked a freelance group I’m in and the general feeling was that it would be useful as it’s always nice to hear the stories of other freelancers.
Yet I still had doubts. Who am I to tell my freelance story? It’s not a very exciting story, and I don’t feel as if I’m a particularly “successful” freelancer. The story doesn’t actually have a conclusion because I’m living that life and continuing to evolve within it. I’m not even very good at living my best creative life that I go on about because other things often get in the way!
So what’s the point in sharing it?
A question to myself – whose definition of “success” am I measuring myself against?
My definition of success is whether I have time to go for a walk and to spend a little bit of time each week writing, whether I have the flexibility to drop everything when my daughter is ill or when school springs a last minute event on us, and whether I have a network of people I can ask for help or who ask me to work on projects with them.
And I do have those things. I keep specific times free for me and being creative. I never book in more work than I can handle. And I’m gradually building up my network of people I can trust to pass on parts of projects or whole projects to.
Plus what sort of projects I work on and whether I’m happy with the mix.
I get to work on some interesting projects, and some really worthwhile ones. I get to invent my own projects as well – and occasionally get paid for them too. Sometimes I work on boring things, or projects that are overall very worthwhile have boring elements to them. But I can choose. I can say no! (And I do.) I can reinvent myself whenever I want a change.
Whether I like the people I work with.
I’ve been lucky that most of the people I’ve worked with as a freelancer, either as clients or colleagues, have been very pleasant to work with and we’ve worked well together. And along the way I’ve come across some lovely freelancers who I meet up with every now and then.
I’ve worked with a variety of different clients, from corporates to agencies to charities to one-person businesses. And many of them keep coming back to me with more projects.
And whether I make “enough” money (enough by my definition)
Actually I’ve made reasonable money every year of my freelance career, enough for what I need. (I’ve been a freelancer for almost 10 years (with a break in the middle where I had a job for a few years).) I could always do with increasing my revenue and improving the profit margin, but I’m broadly happy.
So I am a success if I measure myself against my own criteria rather than what “everyone else” thinks I should care about.
I’m happy with my mix of work and clients and ability to change if I want to, and I’m successful according to my own criteria, and I’ve definitely developed a few good habits along the way that are worth sharing.
I don’t aim to reach millions of people with my story of explorations in freelancing and creativity – but if I can give a few people some ideas that add a little bit of joy to their every day lives, then my ebook will have done its job.
And in writing this, I realised that being able to do that makes it worth me finally finishing it and publishing it.
If you’d like to buy a copy of “Creative Untangling – experiments in self-employment and creativity”, you can now do so here.
(And what’s with the photo of the large heron? Honestly, it has no relevance to this post at all, but I like it, so here it is.)
