Something on my mind since my class last night:
The pluses of the 9-5 full-time job I have now: steady, good money. excellent healthcare. paid vacation. security and stability.
The pluses of becoming a freelance copyeditor: working at home and setting my own schedule. constant challenges to my brain. learning and growing my skillset. freedom.
Hmm.
I would add to the minuses that pretty quickly, the ‘constant challenges to my brain’ thing would become ‘editing the same fucking crap over and over again for decades’.
But then again, a 9-to-5 job consists of doing the same thing over and over again as well, and you have to dress up and go to an office.
re: life less ordinary
My mom used to be a freelance copy editor, and it sucked. People would get their shit back then blow off paying her after she rewrote their whole goddamn crappy ass dissertation. Probably because in order to do a really good job on a really heinous piece of writing, you have to spend a lot of time on it, and people don’t want to pay hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on copy editing. It becomes a tradeoff between doing high-quality work and providing a service at a reasonable cost for the client.
On the other hand, it can be fun and challenging if you are interested in what you are editing. Doing temp work is an option, but working for a company offers the most financial security. But that’s back to working in an office. Bleh.
Add to the minuses of free-lance:
* not knowing where your next paycheck is coming from
* not having enough work to pay your bills
* no healthcare
Why do you think that editing will be more mentally challenging than what you’re doing now? It is something that constantly engages your brain, true. But doesn’t the programming you do now?
What if the editing that comes your way is science editing or finance editing or medical editing?
I just ask b/c I’ve thought seriously about going freelance–and I’m not sure I can make a living that way–part of that may be that I don’t live in a big city.
One bit of advice that I got was to start taking on freelance jobs while I still had my 9-5 job and try to build up a client base before leaving the 9-5.
Sometimes the programming challenges me, but I am a bit bored by the web. I have always been more interested in publishing.
I dunno, just something I was thinking over. I still need to put food on my table and it’s not like I totally hate my job. I just don’t want to be here forever.
Plus also, as mentioned briefly above, as a freelancer you will spend a lot of your time — a lot more than you want to or plan to — doing office paperwork, hassling clients to pay, keeping projects organized (this is a good hassle, ’cause that means you have many!), more hassling clients to pay, waiting for checks, taking temp jobs to support you when work dries up inexplicably, then hassling some more clients, then doing self-employment taxes.
Being a freelance [anything] is going to be 40% accounting and pressuring clients, and 40% marketing yourself in order to get work, and 20% actually doing the work.
But it’s also fun to try it. I was lucky enough to have a husband with a paycheck to back me up however. I wouldn’t be brave enough to do it on my own.
Little things like that.