The Work at Home Freelance Blues

Those of you who work at home will sympathize with my dilema.  Working at home with no family can be a very lonely and isolated venture.

I’m a divorced father living alone in a 2 bedroom apartment.  My lovely daughters stay with me every other weekend and I very much look forward to their arrival.  We play games, share stories, watch movies and even go out for meals and bookstore shopping.  I look forward to these times I get to share with my girls.

But when I’m alone I get to work.  I must motivate myself to wake up each morning at a decent hour in order to make some coffee, eat a little breaky, check email, then get to writing.  It’s not always easy.

I’ve always been a procrastinator.  In high school and college I wrote term papers and final dissertations usually the day or night before they were due.  Not a good practice in the professional writing world.  Each writing project I acquire gets assigned a due date on my calendar so I know what must be done by what day.

The problem with that system is that if I have a day or two between project due dates I get complacent and believe it is a day off where I can watch a DVD or read a book.  Why?  Because typing all day all by myself is boring.  Sure, I love the research I do for writing projects.  But staying home while all my friends are at their day jobs puts me in a place where I must entertain myself.  And frankly, I can be a pretty boring person.

So freelance writing isn’t all fun and games.  It requires a heap of self motivation and the ability to keep oneself solitarily occupied.  I’m still learning.  I’ve worked in a business office for over 13 years so the last six months at home have been an interesting challenge.  But is it worth it to be home sometimes 24 hours a day?  You bet!  I wouldn’t change a thing.  It can only get better with experience.