Freelancing misnomers and assumptions
How many times have you been in this situation?
[adsense]You’re out to dinner with family or friends and someone asks, “So, what are you doing for a living now?”
For some reason, people love to talk about what they do for work. Everything we do and are is externally identified by what we do for a living.
So you answer with, “I’m freelancing now. I work from home on the internet.”
And that’s where it all starts to go downhill…
Must be nice…
Photo by Anomalily
“Wow, it must be nice to work from home and do nothing all day!”
I’m sure it is nice to do nothing all day. But ask any successful freelancer, and they will tell you that their schedules are just as jam-packed with stuff to do as anyone else – more often than not, moreso. Between juggling various projects, being their own customer service, marketing team, accountants, and so forth, freelancers have a lot on their plates.
Here are my answers to some of the more common questions and statements I’ve had the pleasure of hearing.
Q&A with Danalyn
“You’re not doing anything, are you?” (on the phone)
You know, I’m really not doing anything right now. But my doing nothing is paying me per hour, so unless you want me to start billing you more than Miss Cleo, I’m going to have to take a rain check on this phone call.
“That must be easy money, huh?”
Yes, because instead of strolling into the office and maybe doing 3 hours of work and getting paid for 8, I actually do get paid for each hour I work…and only the hours I work.
“You must be rich. Can I borrow $100?”
Sure. But only if I can borrow $200 from you.
“It must me nice not having to pay taxes”
I bet it is. Unfortunately, I don’t have that luxury.
In fact, I pay more taxes than you do. It hurts. Especially when I have to fork over almost half my earnings to Uncle Sam because of that wonderful thing called the freelance tax.
“So, are you one of those envelope stuffers or something?”
Yes. Once a month, when I drop off the rent.
Do you need help finding a “real job”?
Well, since the money I make doing this is real enough to pay the bills, I think I’ll pass. Thanks for the offer, though.
Filed under: Misc | 3 Comments
Tags: Freelancing, Misinformation, Work From Home
Recent at SavvyLancer- Recent at Sporadic Mind…
- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
LOL yes, everyone just loves how you must have the easiest job ever when you work from home. Like you say, what they don’t realize is, when you don’t work then you don’t get paid it’s so simple.
the real job thing kills me too. of course, I’m not in your same situation though. although I do work from home, I do have to go into the office once in a while. what a drag.
When I would tell folks that I was self-employed, usually the next question out of their mouths was “What else do you do?” As for working at home, they do make the assumption that I don’t have anything else to do, except chat with them on the phone.
I guess it’s just a part of our culture.
It’s always beaten into our heads that we have to grow up and “get a good job”…and for some reason, that means 8-5 in an office somewhere. People just have a hard time coming to terms with the concept of working from home, and that it is possible.
I dunno. It’s strange.