A Day In The Life Of Yours Truly...

People believe that a freelancer is living the dream life and is able to effortlessly balance work and life. Doesn't quiet work that way. It is a tough balancing act but at the end of the day it is totally worth it because it is still better than working in office the entire day. Just like in a corporate or a regular job, freelancing also demands that you do things which you are not particularly fond of.

Here's what my typical day looks like:
5.45 am - 6 am: Alarm goes off and I start my day. Prepare tiffin for our daughter if it is a week day or just talk with husband if it is a weekend. Most days I do yoga for almost an hour. Sometimes, if I have slept very late the previous night,  I decide to give it a miss. I do try to do Suryanamaskar at least 10 times even if I don't have time to do the other yoga asanas/exercises. I totally love Suryanamaskar and what it does to me...

8.00 am: Time for a quick breakfast, which is usually cornflakes (I know, boring...) on weekdays. I continue to read tweets, stories from websites I like to visit all this time. Earlier I was a regular newspaper reader but not so now. Sometimes I just glance through newspapers but mostly the reading about current affairs is now on laptop or phone.

8.30 am: Work finally starts. Mostly I create a to-do list before hitting the bed the previous day. I generally like to schedule interviews in the first half of the day. Thanks to technology most of the interviews now happen on phone or email, though I do prefer a face-to-face meeting. I also check linkedin, facebook, twitter for any relevant update. Recently I have got a few assignments through Linkedin, so I am not taking that lightly. Usually mornings are for regular work like, invoices, pitching and whatever time is left, for writing. Many a times I would call up my freelancing friends or others during this time period to break the monotony.

1.30 pm: time to get ready to bring the daughter home. I take a good two hour break around this time to eat, talk, watch television and other assorted things. If daughter is in good mood, we would laugh and joke around otherwise we argue....travails of a teenager's mother :D.

3.15 pm-3.30: I am back on my table to continue where I left. I work on assignments which have deadlines staring at them. It is obvious but nevertheless I will say it...as a freelancer, you have to be extremely particular about deadlines and the kind of work you are dishing out. You can survive in a regular job by doing shoddy work but not as a freelancer. To survive (and hopefully, to thrive) you need to take your work seriously, which means deadline and quality of work is a serious matter.

But of course with daughter at home the second part of the day is not as productive as the first half...

6.00 pm: Time for a walk...Pedometer keeps me going for at least two miles if not more. This is also the time I call up people, family and indulge in general chit chat. Also listen to music...nowadays I find I really enjoy Saxophone instrumental and Shillong Choir music.

7.30 pm: Time for dinner. Yeah, I take dinner at 7.30 nowadays. I started doing it about two months back and now it is part of daily routine. The rest of the family has dinner later. Post dinner it is time for pitter patter at home; talking to the daughter and the husband and generally chilling out.

8.30 pm: watching television or reading a book...usually the former nowadays. Love Brooklyn Nine Nine...

10.00 pm: It required I work otherwise time to hit the bed or maybe social media. Mostly though I work for around two hours around this time... 

Freelancing Woes...

There comes a time in every freelancers life when suddenly you would realize that there is not enough work in the pipeline. This can happen for a variety of reasons, ranging from seasonal changes, you are not pitching enough (well, yeah, sometimes we are so busy finishing the existing assignments that we forget we have to pitch to get new ones) to just pure procrastination.

Something like this happened with me last month and it was a combination of the first two factors. I woke up one fine day and realized that the pipeline was very empty and I was used to congestion. Initially, I actually welcomed the idea, thinking of lazy afternoons ahead. This lasted for about two-three days during which time I had cleaned up my house from top to bottom and had nothing to do but to twiddle my thumb. And then I starting pitching at breakneck speed and hustled like I haven't for a very long time. 

The panic subsided and thank God for that otherwise my family was beginning to lose patience with me. They generally like me working on table and out of their way. Anyway that is a separate blog topic. I started working on my novel (don’t laugh people…it is bound to finish sometime. Have patience, folks!).

I decided to use the time to revamp my professional website (which will take another few days) and launched marketing blitz on all possible fronts. There is a reason I went on overdrive. The last time I encountered similar problem, I lost confidence and gave up freelancing. This time around I decided to change my strategy to survive and thrive in a downturn. I can say now that it did help. But one has to be proactive and not reactive to avoid these kind of situations. 

Let it be said that in spite of best efforts sometimes it is bound to happen...and whenever it doesn't mean that you give up totally on your freelancing dream but to change the strategy a bit. Think of the new markets, new areas and newer things that you can do. Just don't ever give up...

It Is Not Just A Table...

Recently, I purchased a nice, sturdy study table for myself. Made with sheesham wood and antique black knobs, it is a picture of elegance and sophistication. It is just perfect and exactly what I had in mind. I was super happy and just couldn’t help smiling for the longest time. The daughter humoured me for some time but really couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about.

The point is not the table but what it stands for. I come from a fairly middle class family and never had a table while growing up. For the first 14 years of my life we lived in a house which couldn’t have been smaller. There was no space for a study table. Most of the time I studied on bed or a small dining table. Later on I got our old dinning table to use as study table but it didn’t have drawers to keep your stationary, no lock and key to hide your secret diary from the world...it just seemed a compromise, the second best arrangement. I did own a computer table much later in life, but again it was for a huge desktop and was very basic and definitely not a reflection of my personality. At this time in life, I also associated  study table with intellectuals or rich people, who had time and luxury to read and write books. I know, I know thats not true and I was way off the mark...

But yes, now you will ask that hello, you have been working and earning your living for your entire life, so you could have bought table earlier if it was so important. Precisely, my point. After marriage it is just expected that you would be putting your needs at the bottom of the list. Sometimes there was no space in the house and at other times there was no money to spend on things which were viewed as unnecessary. And because I was working in office for most of the day, I myself believed that study table was not required.

However, I have been freelancing for the last 18 months or so and know that I would most likely be working from home for a long time. I needed one regular place or workstation to sit and work and this seemed to be the right time to do it. But it is not just a table, it is a commitment to my work and to freelancing, which I have chosen over a normal job. It is a sacrosanct space, it is a place to think and innovate, to write and to achieve more and more from life and to realise my potential. It is a testimony that I can and should carve my own future and last but not the least it is a sign that in this household women are given opportunities to follow their dreams, they are not shortchanged of their desires. So, it is not just a table for me...

The daughter will never get it because she has had a study table for as long as she can remember...

A Fine Balancing Act

It is almost a year (11 months to be exact) since I started to freelance. One of the key reasons I wanted to freelance was that I wanted to enjoy life. I felt my life was passing me by while I spent hours on commuting and dealt with office politics. So basically I did want to work and I also wanted to go out there and do things like finishing my book, learning a musical instrument and so on.

Though I am enjoying the freelancing ride it didn’t quiet turn out the way I had imagined. It can be said that I don’t ever want to take up a corporate or a full-time job but I also need to start making some changes in my freelancing life.

One big change is that I hardly ever relax. My family finds it hard to believe that I mostly at home and even then find it hard to relax. I am constantly thinking of new story ideas; pitches to be sent; invoices to be made; events to be attended; sources to be contacted and, last but not the least, stories to be written. So, it is not surprising that I am simply unable to switch off.

One of the most enjoyable day (and the one I recall with absolute delight!!) in the last one year was the one when I just got up from my desk and decided to just wander about in Connaught Place just like in the college days. That the weather was perfect added to the pleasure. Then there was another day when I decided to stop working and paint. I really don’t know how to paint but Youtube is always there…it was good fun. But these kind of days are few and far between.

So, yes, I do need to learn to relax while freelancing. I possibly cannot go on working the way I do. It is easy to practice this in corporate job because one just gets up from office seat and comes home. So work and office are very clearly demarcated. In my case, I get up from bed, check my mail, open the door for the maid, pick up newspapers, decide what to eat in breakfast and lunch, again open the door to hand over the keys to the driver, if I have a deadline I would start working right away in my pajamas…you get the picture. Work and home life is so complicatedly meshed up for me right now that I find myself drained just trying to concentrate on one thing and not ignoring the other. It is a fine balance…

Some days I use to work out a coffee house. I would just go and park myself at a café dot at 9 am (that’s when they open otherwise frankly I can easily reach at 8 am) but then my wallet was stolen while I was deep in my work.  After this I was just so uncomfortable at this particular café that I was simply unable to work. So I was back home. Now I have discovered another arrangement of spaces on hire for freelancers…I am quiet tempted because that would solve my problem. Let’s see…

And yeah, I am yet to finish my book or to enroll myself to learn some musical instrument. The latter is not because of want of any effort but the problem is that most the teachers in vicinity are teaching kids and are somewhat reluctant or uncomfortable to take up middle-aged students. Sigh!!