There has been a reason I have withheld from writing any new blog posts for quite some time. Well many reasons actually. The main reason however, is that I resigned from my job about two weeks ago and I wanted to wait until everything was finished before I started blogging again. It’s been a really emotional (ahh damn I’ve gone emo) and stressful last few months for me.

I’m sure many people have left jobs before and have gone through similar scenarios. You start getting really combative, you aren’t easily motivated, maybe you’re even unmotivated, you start effecting those who are around you. It can get ugly, and while I was definitely in a bad state of mind, I would like to think I pulled myself together enough to leave on good terms with my former company. After all, it was they who gave me my shot and fostered my learning for all of this stuff.

My leaving wasn’t brought on so much by something they did, it was brought on by my own actions: doing a ton of freelance work. I loved it. I’m going to tell you why the idea of freelancing was so appealing to me. Even though I haven’t really lived the life, as my last day at work was only 3 days ago, I certainly have spent hours reading about it and obsessing about it.

It’s funny, this post has been sitting in my mind for a long time. I’ve been dying to write it for over a year. Why? Because I knew at some point the call of going completely freelance was going to get louder and louder as I met more and more people.

There are three main areas I can group my thoughts into: Lifestyle, Control, and Business.

Lifestyle
While my previous company was very flexible with schedules, it wasn’t enough for me. I grew up fishing in Alaska, where one busts their asses for four or five months out of the year and then has a lot of downtime. While I don’t expect that extreme, I do gravitate towards having the flexibility in my daily routine. When I have a lot of work to do, I don’t mind working 15 hours a day for a week, but when I don’t have that work to do, I want to be able to work 2-3 hour days and focus on some other part of my life I enjoy. There is no way, in an agency setting, that this would be an acceptable way of working.

And when I am working, I like to be completely focused and efficient. This is much easier to do when I am working at home, versus working in an office. However, at some point I would like to get a co-op office space going with other creative professionals in the Portland area. I do enjoy the conversations and playfulness that occur within an office environment, and as much as I love it, it’s really difficult to buckle down in that setting. Hence the flexibility of working at home suits me.

Control

For anyone who has ever played the telephone game, that’s what agency life feels like. All of us are human, we all miscommunicate, forget things, and misunderstand. Put that in a chain that goes Client -> Sales -> Project Management -> Creative (where I was) and the idea of managing multiple projects for multiple clients becomes daunting. It’s not the people in this situation, because everyone does their best, it’s the process.

I had a really great perspective of all of this when I was both working in that environment and freelancing. In freelancing, it was the client and I talking things over and then me going and executing. Rarely was there “flare-up” situation because I always knew where I stood. In controlling the process from the beginning, and not having too many surprises, I can work through most issues without a flair-up.

Business

I say business for this topic just because it is the most all encompassing word I can think of. Business is freelancing, business is entrepreneurship, business is sales, business is management, business is creative. I got a Business Degree from Oregon State University because I knew that I liked all of these things. I will never be able to narrow myself down to one thing. I am too curious about everything to do that. I hear the word “lead” and my ears perk up. This is the mind set of a businessman, this is what I have always had. I love my craft of designing and building websites, but being good at one doesn’t exclude another. It just means I am not specialized. There are some brilliant designers out there with talent that goes so deep I cannot fathom it, we need eachother.

Business also means being my own man. It was tough for me to keep up a motivation based on salary alone. I need more than that. Whether it comes from competition, warm fuzzies, or something else. Ultimately to do really good work, it has to come from ones self. Intrinsic motivation is mother of all brilliant notions, and once it left me at my old company, I could no longer produce at the level I once did.

For me, working on my freelance is all intrinsic motivation, I do it because I love it. There are extrinsic business factors that play in, such as great work begets more work, but essentially it comes down to this: if my name is going to be on something, it’s going to be good. In working for someone else, my name wasn’t on any of the work.

The last thing I will say about freelance is this: you don’t have budget constraints. Yes, we are being paid for our time, and sometimes it’s more, and sometimes it’s less. But we have a choice of what we put out the door. I can’t really lose money on a project because I don’t have to pay someone else to do the work. I am designing and building everything I am selling, I only make more or less depending on the project. I know that everything I do has to be top notch, or I may as well not do it.

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Yes, I am on my third day. Yes, there are probably downsides to freelancing. No, I haven’t been exposed to them yet. But right now, once I get over this cold, I will be whistlin’ Dixie I had the stones to ante up and give this lifestyle a chance.

I know it’s not for everyone, but it’s for me.

Stay tuned, my steady stream of conscience will be flowing through this blog.

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