1st November 2021 at 10:18

Three years ago today, I started my second stint as a freelancer. It’s still my best career move to date.

After the company I worked for went under—making me redundant 48 hours before my second child was born—and a subsequent hellish period of going through interview processes with Tech Companies™, I made the right choice to fuck all of that off and go back to being a freelancer. Three years on: I have absolutely no regrets whatsoever.

This year has by far been my most successful work year, but also, the busiest and most stressful. I vowed to work less this year, but after making what has turned out to be the right choice, to turn my back on making educational content: getting more into client services work has kept my schedule very busy.

This has now been my longest role in tech. The longest prior to this was 2.5 years in the agency I joined after my last stint as a freelancer.

I’m in a completely different place since then. Mostly, I’m a lot more experienced. I started freelancing when I was essentially a junior and that was a baptism of fire. I now recommend that people in a similar position work for a company—for at least a couple of years—just to get that early experience and hopefully, mentorship.

I would definitely recommend to people beyond that phase of their career to consider freelancing though. The freedom that freelance provides is worth so much. It helps me work to live, rather than live to work. There’s also a 100% guarantee that my employer—me—won’t turn out to be a horrible company.

Anyway, that’s enough work stuff on this blog. I’ve got big plans for next year that will hopefully—long term—make life all about working to live in a sustainable and sensible way. For now, though: I’m just off the back of a horror deadline, so I’m gonna make a celebratory brew and think fondly back to how happy and relieved I was on November 1st, 2018.