Last month brought many positive things to my life. While June was extremely busy and became a  champion among all 75 months of our business existence, July was quite slow and left enough time for summer rest and family weekends. Nevertheless it brought enough projects for building-up sound month earnings. This is great to feel that you can be confident about your finance even during slow periods.

Now — when I am torn between closing all projects and packing bags for tomorrow flight to the sea — a good idea has occurred to me. I decided to write a post before going to vacations. It is not about any mistakes that taught me something and it is not about some tricks or wisdom which could help in our profession. I want to say a few words about happiness of being freelance. Yes, so easy! I realized that I am really happy and I want to put this happiness into words and to discuss it with you.

My Seven Reasons to Love Being Freelance

1. You may forget about alarm clock. It is really amazing for such night owls like me. I hated to get up at 6-7 a.m. during school and university years. The only thing I could dream about at those miserable minutes was my warm bed. In those days I could not even dream about getting a job with flexible hours! If someone from the future told me this, I would have never believed.
2. You may forget about long driving to work. I don’t even know what I love more — this point or the first one. If there is anything that I hate more than rising with the sun, then it is wasting time while getting to the office. I become nervous in traffic jams even in Chelyabinsk with 1 million people’s population, let alone such metropolitan cities as Moscow or St. Petersburg. I can’t even imagine how millions of people keep sanity when they need to spend hours in endless jamming. Or they don’t?
3. You spend more time with your loved ones. This point is really worth a lot. In this wild, wild world many of us forget about simple joy of being closer to the closest people in their lives (sorry for tautology). If you have an opportunity to kiss or hug your partner or child many times a day, you feel yourself better and you energize the others too. In my case both my husband and I work at home and I don’t stop thanking the universe for this wonderful combination!
4. You are closer to your children. This point is related to the previous one, but relations with children occupy a very specific part of life. Let me provide my own example. I have a 4-year old son, and he is a sensitive child. While many children are able to spend several hours a day in a kindergarten at the age of 1.5 or 2 years old, Leonard was not ready to be separated from the family 2 years ago. I saw that we needed more time at home. If I had an in-house job, I would’ve had nothing to do but force him to attend a daycare. As soon as my husband and I worked at home, we were able to leave our child at home too. We hired a babysitter for 4 hours a day / 2-3 days a week. That was my most productive time for work. We also shared our parenting responsibilities and allowed each other to work or have some rest in a calm atmosphere. Besides, we have wonderful grandparents who often help us with this small tornado. At 3 years old Leo started his adaptation in a kindergarten. Our freelance allowed to make this process slow and gradual. I am happy that we had this opportunity and let our son move to every new stage at his own pace.

5. You may do housework and cook at the time most convenient to you. When you freelance, you may do all necessary housework portionwise, for example during breaks in order to change the activity type. You do not need to wait until you finish all your projects and start cooking or cleaning when you are already exhausted after a long busy day.
6. You may travel at favorable prices. You don’t need to coordinate your vacations with your boss, so you may either plan your trip in advance or buy last minute tours. In both cases you save money. Of course, there is the other side of the story, but this is the topic for another post.
7. You may work with the whole world wherever you live. Whether you live in a large city or in a village, if you have Internet access, you may move mountains. Choose a place most comfortable for you and build your business. When you are happy about where you live, you have more enthusiasm for your professional growth.

These are my own 7 reasons for being happy about freelance. Perhaps I would add one more: we would have never been able to earn as much as we do now if we stayed in the world of full-time office jobs. This is especially true about our provincial Russian city where in-house translators earn no more than $400-500 per month and have no perspectives for career development.

What are your personal reasons to love your freelance life? It would be great to read your comments.

If you like this post, I would appreciate sharing it with your friends and colleagues.

By the way, there are definitely some reasons to hate freelance. I am planning to share them with you in my next post.