Phew! It’s been another busy few months (make that first half of the year!) and I’m finally finding time to have a bit of a breather.
It’s always good to be busy, and having had a week or so off after finishing my latest campaign work for Soccer Aid for Unicef 2022, I feel refreshed enough to start looking for that next project.
I feel as a freelancer that I must always be working, and a tiny bubble of guilt can sometimes pop into my head if I have allowed myself a long weekend away from my computer. That said, I have totally lovely, wonderful clients who understand that I need some holiday time (and/or am juggling other clients) and so cannot always meet their needs immediately. The daft thing is that it’s actually my own guilt I feel during those digital detox days and I have managed to find some truly understanding people to work with that understand this, and to them I am forever grateful.
I was discussing this very subject the other day with one such client. One definite benefit that I find as a freelancer is the variety of people I get to work with. It stimulates me, it engages me and it allows me to enjoy the work that I do. My clients make my job. The work is always roughly the same as my skills are transferrable across a whole range of industries, but it is the people who I enjoy chatting with and working with to get a job across the line.
Although I am currently enjoying some down time, and it has been a pretty intense 6 months, I am by no means complaining. I have the inevitable messages that are asking my availability when I have plans already in place and I start to think to myself “err, can I fit this in around my train journey and festival attendance if I’m willing to stash my laptop somewhere and go back for it later?!” but truly, in my heart I know that I need the down time so I can fully function, engage brain and power through on the up times.