Freelancer's Office: Blog

I am going to be working on the office this week.  I got a bunch of work done on it, but decided that I had to get myself a few things before I could do much more.

Trip to town yesterday after my dad had a physical therapy appointment brought home some power tools.  A router bench, a table saw, a box of router bits and a tool bag deal with a skilsaw, sander and drill in it.  Now I get to set myself up a nice workshop and start making fancy shelving and stuff for my office and the rest of the house.

I’ve had the flu for the past few days, so my office move has been stalled because of it.  I am hoping that today is the last day of feeling like I was drug backward through a flooded rat hole, but not sure if I am going to feel much better tomorrow or not.

Even though my gut hurts like hell today, I have decided to dedicate most of this morning to getting my office move finished off so I can get things set up and organized in the other room.  I have been working toward the goal of having my office set up at the head of the basement stairs and leading down into the library part of the office at the base of the stairs.

So, today will be spent getting the room where the basement stairs is at emptied out and moving things to get ready to do any painting touch-ups that  may be needed before I start working on building the desks for my office in there.

“Many suffer from the incurable disease of writing and it becomes chronic in their sick minds”  — Juvenal (AD 60-130)

Being a freelancer is not like working in a normal 9-5 job.  Here it is 6:37 a.m. and I have been at work for a little over an hour.  I expect to work until I sleep tonight, somewhere between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. for a total work day of roughly 14 to 16 hours - give or take a little time because of pausing to eat and other necessities.

I probably put between 10 and 12 hours into working in given day, and some days I end up working straight through to the next day for more in the line of 20 to 24 hours of work.  It is not the life for anyone that wants to have a life.

But, I do love my work, and I know that I could as easily stop breathing as I could stop writing.  Sure I can give writing up for a little while, but I start to turn funny colors and go all sweaty, lunging for the nearest pencil and notebook like a drowning man lunging for a life preserver.

If you are not as addicted to writing, then the career of a freelance writer might not be something you would want to pursue.  I write not because I have to, not because I want to, not even because I love to, I write for all of those reasons and more.

The word freelancer has been traced to the literary work Ivanhoe, by Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832)¹, who used the word to describe a “medieval mercenary warrior.”

The Google ‘define:’ search shows Wikipedia describing freelancer as:

“A freelancer or (freelance worker) is a self-employed person working in a profession or trade in which full-time employment is also common. The word’s etymology derives from the medieval term for a mercenary, a “free lance,” which literally described a knight who was not attached to any particular lord, and could be hired for a given task.”

So, the definition of a freelancer would be someone who works without being under contract, selling their service to those who would pay the price they ask. The word freelancer has evolved into being primarily used to define writers that work for a variety of publishers dependent on where they can earn a decent wage for their labor.

The Freelancer’s Office is my online working office for my freelance work as a writer. This is my office in all of its virtual messiness and all of its eclectic chaos that is the nature of working as a freelancer.

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1. Wikipedia.org
   knight picture courtesy of Woodsy[↩]