The sixth year of freelance: It’s kinda stress free

09/02/2017
Time to read: 1 minute

The joys of freelance

Sam Howard celebrates six years of not having a proper job. Unless you count running your own little agency of freelance workers as a proper job…

The evolution continues. From lone freelancer to collaborator, to creating the collective to now (albeit cloud-based) looking like a proper little PR agency. We work with multiple retained clients and a regular crew of four senior and two junior PRs.

We all had a team meeting a few weeks back, and a common thread was the lack of stress around the job. (And yet, when you go freelance, it feels perilous. I still remember the early weeks, lying in the dark staring at the ceiling, mentally muttering, ‘Oh god, I think I’ve ruined my career’).

But what the crew were referring to is the complete lack of that type of stress that distracts you from getting the job done:

  • Someone checking on your timekeeping
  • The commute
  • The juggling of personal appointments
  • The annual leave quotas
  • The pre-occupation with promotions, job titles and perks
  • The jockeying for position
  • The vying for the boss’s favour

There is none of that.

The only stress with freelance work is doing a good job for the client

But here’s the thing – when you work for yourself, the sense of ownership and personal responsibility is absolute. Every project, without exception, has to go well. In fact, better than well, it has to be the very best you can achieve.

So that client stress goes deep.

And even though we share everything, it’s still all too easy for perfect storms to occur. For example, in the space of one week, we had not one but two of our beloved start-ups announcing funding. In our world, this is a huge deal and requires immense logistics and planning, as well as working with all the financial PR agencies and fund providers and pitching to media in multiple sectors.

As luck would have it, in the same week, it was the end of module live assessment time for the class I teach at Uni. Nothing is to be done but to disappear under the strain for six weeks and know you aren’t coming up for air until every stone is turned.

And possibly I was a bit over-emotional at the end of it.

So yes, freelancing can be stressful, but the sense of ownership and personal pride in work well done without any friction that comes with a ‘proper’ job continues to make the freelance life net positive.

Share