A recent photo of the author ecstatic to be at the beach
Last September I went the freelance route.
Though it’s been paved with stomach-churning scares (“what do you mean my check is arriving NEXT week?!”) and painful boredom (“maybe I should drive down to Whole Foods and stare at people”), career-wise, I’ve never been happier.
Though I’m not rollin’ in it, the most joyous attribute of going freelance is the amount of time off I have to travel.
My last 9-5 job gave me 5 vacation days a year. Those five days included sick and personal time. Since the company decided to place their business almost an hour outside of Austin, that meant one had to add two extra hours of drive time for a doctor’s or DMV appointment. Personal errands that you could only attend to during the business work week took almost all day to achieve which meant one less vacation day a year. Needless to say, I never felt encouraged to go to the doctor when I needed to.
We also had no bookend days off on important (more…)