Author Archives: Jennifer Stakes Roberts

Taking the leap to freelancing: a worksheet guide

  By Jennifer Stakes Roberts | May 13, 2013 - 8:02 am | Freelancing, Freelancing parents, The Freelancers Guide to Managing Projects
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A friend said to me recently that she wanted to move from her job in the public sector and become a freelance writer. Now, I know that in these days of precarious job security this may seem like a crazy idea, but I know what a talented writer she is, how driven and self-motivated she is, and how a freelancing lifestyle will give her the flexibility to spend time with her kids. In short, she has the talent, motivation and personality to make the leap to freelancing and be a huge success in her field.

But in the meantime she is faced with the problem of having no portfolio to use for pitches and no client network to draw on. So what should she do? Work for free to build up a portfolio? Possibly, although she cannot afford to do that for long. I think that with her background she does have the something to show to potential clients, and it is just a question of marketing herself.

I am not a big fan of doing something for nothing. By ‘nothing’ I don’t mean physical cash, just that you should consider what you are getting back from your work. If you want to build up a portfolio then being published somewhere for free can help you, but always bear in mind this is a bit like work experience in that you should only accept not being paid until you feel confident that you have learned what you need from your time. Similarly, you can make contacts by offering to work for free or at a reduced rate, or else gain experience if you want to move into a new niche.

I have written endlessly over at EnhancedFreelance.com about the importance of carving out a niche as a freelancer, whether it is working for a specific client set, working in a distinct field, creating specific products, or working in a particular media. Personally, I write about digital marketing because it interests me, there is plenty of work in the field, and I have good contacts in the industry. Getting started in a niche can be hard though and it is tempting to take any and all work that comes your way; it feels counter-intuitive to narrow your focus and potentially miss out on opportunities.

I have found the opposite, though. If people know you as ‘the digital marketing person’, they are more likely to refer you to others they know who need articles, blog posts or other content in that field. It is easier to market yourself in a niche and contact people you think might need your services if you have something specific to offer. Plus, your fees can reflect your expertise in a way they are unlikely to if you are a generalist.

But that still leaves the question of how you get started in a field and how you build a portfolio or start pitching.

I have put together a worksheet to help anyone else who wishes to make that first step. Apologies to the non-writers: much of this is also applicable to other professions if you want to take a look.

Click here to download Jennifer Stakes Roberts’ Guide to Getting Started as a Freelance Writer.

Image by Flicker user blinkingidiot (Creative Commons)

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Dreaming of writing an ebook? 9 tips to make it a reality

  By Jennifer Stakes Roberts | July 11, 2012 - 3:25 pm | Freelancing, Organizing your projects, Time management
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For many of us, writing an ebook is just a matter of finding a bit of spare time: we’ve already got a title and some great ideas jotted down, possibly even a content outline. Once this really busy week’s over with, we’ll get right to it.

Except that for most of us, finding that bit of spare time never happens. There are always looming deadlines, new client marketing, a network event, a costume to find for our kid’s school play, and a hundred other things that seem to take priority.

So what can we do to take that ebook off the back burner and make sure we find the time to finally see it through? Here are nine simple tips that I hope will make that ebook dream come true for you.

 

1/ Collaborate

Why go it alone? There are plenty of people out there who also want to create an ebook, so why not get together with someone else? You could team up with another writer, or else a photographer, developer or some other freelancer who is looking for someone to write content for a shared project. The best thing about working with someone else is it gives you extra motivation because you know they are relying on you. Also, you can celebrate together once your ebook is finished.

 

2/ Plan

Without deadlines, projects slip. Personal projects are the worst for this; when everything piles up at work and at home your ebook is likely to be the first thing to give. If you plan out your project using a calendar, spreadsheet or a project management tool, you can give yourself deadlines to work towards. Even small deadlines such as finishing a chapter can help motivate you.

 

3/ Break it down

Even if you have a great plan, it can help to break down each stage even further into tiny, tiny chunks that are much easier to tackle. Making a detailed task list means that you can check off absolutely everything as you do it, giving you a great sense of achievement.

 

4/ Do what you love

A labor of love often feels less like work, even if you have to put in a lot of hours. Find a topic to write about that inspires you, something that you like to talk and read about in your spare time. If you write about something you are passionate about that love for your subject will shine through your writing.

 

5/ Focus on why

Why are you writing an ebook? Whether it’s to have a separate income outside of your day job, to cement your reputation as an expert in your field, or to open up new opportunities that can come from being an author, it’s a good idea to keep visualizing your end goal. Try putting a sticky note on your computer with an inspiring sentence (I am an author!!) or imagining what it will be like reading your own reviews or giving interviews.

 

6/ Make it easy for yourself

If you feel a bit overwhelmed by the thought of starting such a large project, take a look at what research you already have that you might be able to adapt to your ebook. For example, if you’ve written several articles about health spas, could you build on your research and interviews to write a book about health spas? Just feeling that you have already accomplished the first steps towards writing your book can help motivate you to taking those next steps… and before you know it you’re halfway there!

 

7/ Get it right first time

Research is key! There’s nothing like finishing your ebook then discovering that all your careful formatting isn’t supported by your chosen marketplace’s system, and you have to start all over again to ensure your file can be uploaded properly. How discouraging! So pick where you want to sell your ebook (directly through your website, or through a larger online marketplace like Amazon) and check (and double check!) their rules on what formatting to use from the beginning.

 

8/ Blog about it

If you’re in need of some outside support, why not blog about your ebook? Talking about your progress, hiccups you’ve encountered, or things you have learned can keep you focused on your journey. Hearing back from other people who’ve gone through the same thing can really help you overcome obstacles, and once you have an audience you’ll find you have an incentive to keep going so you can tell your blog readers all about it! Not only that, but you will build up a sizeable number of people who will be interested in your ebook once it is published.

 

9/ Reward yourself

Don’t be put off by how much you still have to do, reward yourself for every section you complete. Whether you put smiley-face stickers on a chart, go for a walk, treat yourself to take-out, or just tell Twitter how happy you are to have achieved the next stage, feeling good about how far you’ve come is a great motivator.

 

Just having an idea for an ebook is a great start. Give yourself a reward for having taken the first step and good luck with taking the next step!

Image by Flickr user txkimmers

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Martha Payne, social media, and the mouth of the voiceless

  By Jennifer Stakes Roberts | June 15, 2012 - 3:57 pm | Social media
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Martha's NeverSeconds Blog

When I were a lass, as they say in the part of the world where I grew up, commentary on school dinners ran to singing rude songs in the playground, our shrill little verses swept away by the brisk Yorkshire wind.

School dinners, school dinners,

concrete chips, concrete chips!

Soggy semolina, soggy semolina,

I feel sick, I feel sick.

Nobody heard us but the lunchtime helpers, who probably clucked under their breath at our ingratitude.

Today I read an astonishing story on the BBC website about a nine-year-old girl from Scotland called Martha Payne, a.k.a. ‘Veg’. Martha’s blog, NeverSeconds, chronicled her daily school meal with a photo and ratings system. It is touchingly frank and well written, and the way she deals with her blog’s growing global popularity as the press began to pick up on her story shows a humility that many much older bloggers could learn from. She starts to include pictures of lunches from around the world and appears delighted at the way they have adopted her ratings system of food-o-meter, mouthfuls, courses, health rating, price, and pieces of hair. As her blog attracted more hits, she set up a Just Giving page and asked readers to donate to Mary’s Meals, a charity that sets up school feeding projects in communities where poverty and hunger prevent children from gaining an education. Her goal was to raise 7,000 GBP to build a kitchen in Malawi for school children.

So far, so good. But then the local council, alarmed at the negative publicity surrounding her descriptions at some of the sub-standard meals the children had been served (and to be fair, most of them had scored well on her food-o-meter scale) banned her blog.

Her final blog entry, entitled ‘Goodbye’, simply stated:

This morning in maths I got taken out of class by my head teacher and taken to her office. I was told that I could not take any more photos of my school dinners because of a headline in a newspaper today.

I only write my blog not newspapers and I am sad I am no longer allowed to take photos. I will miss sharing and rating my school dinners and I’ll miss seeing the dinners you send me too. I don’t think I will be able to finish raising enough money for a kitchen for Mary’s Meals either.

Goodbye,
VEG

Twitter exploded. Celebrity chef and school meals campaigner Jaimie Oliver tweeted Stay strong Martha and thousands of Twitter users quickly jumped in to show their outrage at what they saw as the over-reaction by the council. Within hours Roddy McCuish, the council leader, reversed the decision, but still the news continued to sweep across headlines and social media. What was more astonishing was the impact on Martha’s Just Giving page, which leaped from 2,000 GBP to (at the time of writing) almost 50,000 GBP… and it’s still growing.

Other than the general short-sightedness of local councils, which isn’t entirely news, what can we take away from this? Social media, particularly Twitter, has been instrumental in some of the key news events of the past couple of years. From the Arab Spring, when the outside world followed events through photos and eye-witness accounts that filtered out despite the state censorship of the press, to the London Riots when Blackberrys, Facebook and Twitter were blamed for the speed with which rioters could convene, to the demonstrators able to outwit police ‘kettling’ tactics, crowds now have access to a mass communication that was inconceivable even a few years ago. For better or for worse, voices can now be raised as one with an astonishing speed: the balance of power has shifted, and is still shifting as more and more people become connected via online tools.

What is different about these new voices is that many were formerly the voices of the dispossessed and disenfranchised. Unarmed citizens in military-run states, the ‘hoodies’ of inner cities, and now children.

What is fascinating about Martha’s story is that it shows a new enfranchisement of a previously unheard group: children. Rarely consulted, children are a group with little political power in their own right, and yet here is a case of a child’s blog reaching a global audience of millions and becoming – unwittingly – a voice of influence.

The dynamics of what constitutes power are mutable, and traditional political power, even military power, is losing ground to the collective voices that have found a mouth in social media. From ordinary citizens, to those outside mainstream society, and now children, voices are no longer being swept away on the wind but are gaining the strength to be heard.

PS – you can donate to Mary’s Meals through Martha’s JustGiving page.

Image credit: NeverSeconds

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Your best 20 percent… what would you do?

  By Jennifer Stakes Roberts | June 14, 2012 - 9:29 am | Freelancing, Freelancing parents, Mompreneur/Mumpreneur
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This is my business strategy, what's yours?

As you saw from my last post I had a baby. As you can see from the gap of several weeks between then and now, that’s been keeping me pretty busy. It’s not just the nights waking at all hours for feeds, the day-to-day diaper (nappy) changing, feeding, washing, clothes changing following spit-up and poo explosions (and all this applies to me too, except that I am potty-trained these days and don’t need diapers), the miles worn on the carpets from walking up and down with a grumpy little baby who won’t settle… there’s something else, too. That little cuddly miracle becomes your whole focus, and from the moment of their birth your world lurches onto a new axis and your gravity finds a new center.

I need to find a balance between work and caring for His Babyship. I do feel this incredible deep-rooted biological need to be with him and put his care before my own (I have even left cups of tea un-made and un-drunk: I had always previously regarded tea as a Basic Human Right). At the same time, I don’t want to lose Myself, that person who writes and runs her own business. I still think of business ideas while breastfeeding and concoct whole blog posts in my head during diaper changes, so this person, this Me, isn’t something that can just be switched off or completely overridden by poo-stained onsies.

I am writing this with His Babyship asleep in his travel bassinet by my feet. I do get a couple of hours (but often broken) in the day when he is asleep when I can write. I have a pile of half-finished articles from when he has woken up, which used to be frustrating, but I am getting used to picking up threads and carrying on. I actually get quite a lot of thinking time even if my hands are full, and I chat to His Babyship about everything, so he will be able to start his own website by the time he is 18 months. His first word will probably be ‘WordPress’.

But all this makes you focus on that 20 percent of your business you can carry on with. If you had to say what was the core of your business, what would you do? What aspects of your business do you want to continue with into the future?

Having to assess my business has been enlightening. I have had to stop almost all of my client work as I just can’t commit to deadlines right now. I am still writing modules for Enhanced Freelance, and the one I have just finished about creating your own products has really made me think about just how important it is for freelancers to have separate income streams from products or collaborations that can carry them through…

…excuse me, His Babyship is waking up…

…[a while later] Right, where were we? Oh yes, having your own products or side projects that bring in income separately from your reliance on clients so that when you have a baby/fall ill/move countries/your industry suffers from economic downturn you have something else that can bring in some cash.

So right now I am focusing on a couple of writing projects I’ve had in the back of my mind that aren’t so deadline dependent so I can work them around naps, feeds, diapers and those days that I don’t quite manage to get a shower. When His Babyship is older I’m going to look into daycare so I can go back to some more regular work, but right now this seems like a good compromise between caring for this amazing little bundle and not losing Myself entirely. And it may even work out better for my business in the long term: client work can pay well in the short term but you only ever get one payment for it.

If you had to focus on the core 20 percent of your business, what would you do, and where would it take you?

Image by Flickr user Linda Cronin

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Hands-Free Baby: Mumpreneuring and baby-wrapping

  By Jennifer Stakes Roberts | April 9, 2012 - 12:01 pm | Mompreneur/Mumpreneur
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Like this, but on my sofa with a laptop and more empty cereal bowls

Please excuse any typos or basic grammatical errors in this post: I had a baby 2 weeks ago and am doing quite well to remember my own name at the moment.

Currently, Mr Baby is wrapped up in a sling on my chest (‘baby-wrapping’ as it’s known) and I am sitting on my sofa with my tiny new Acer Notebook. The general scene is much like this picture of Licia Ronzulli at the European Parliament, but with more empty cereal bowls and fewer headsets, unfortunately.

It turns out that newborn babies actually sleep quite a lot. Sure, they decide that 3am is the perfect time for a party, but as long as you are able to keep up with a few naps (and I realize that once you have a toddler as well, that would be almost impossible) you might have a couple of times in the day when all is quiet and you can get some work done. Possibly I should be using the time to catch up on housework, but hey, something has to give.

Mr Baby loves his wrap and sleeps far better in it than his bassinet or baby bouncer, especially when he gets a bit grizzly. I don’t feel like a ‘bad mother’ for ignoring him, he’s here all snuggly and asleep, and I still have two free hands.

So I sat down this morning and wrote a guest post for a freelancing blog to promote Enhanced Freelance and slightly amazed myself. I hadn’t set a date when I would get back to some Real Work, but I like the idea I might be able to get bits and pieces done in this way. I may also be able to keep some brain cells ticking over before I completely lose them all.

I think I might now officially be able to add Mumpreneur (Mompreneur, if we’re being American) to my job title.

Image: The Guardian Newspaper

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The Specialist Generalist: the future of work?

  By Jennifer Stakes Roberts | March 10, 2012 - 10:20 am | Freelancing
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Did you know what you wanted to be when you grew up? An astronaut? A cake decorator? A fire truck? Some lucky people find their calling early on and work towards it, learning the skills, getting the work experience, and being happily settled into a career by the time they are twenty-five. By thirty-five they’ll be considered experts, and by forty-five they’ll be the leaders in their field. But these people are in the vast minority. A study cited by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics put the average number of jobs held by baby boomers over their working lifetimes at eleven.

Eleven! That’s very far from the traditional picture of going out, getting a job and working in the same company your whole career, retiring at sixty-something with a gold watch.

For a growing majority of us, the reality is that our career paths will look more like career mazes. We won’t just be changing jobs, we’ll be changing industries, locations, perhaps countries or continents. Skills and technology change so rapidly that we’ll constantly have to learn and educate ourselves to stay relevant.

Do we mourn the loss of the ‘job for life’ mentality? That comfort level, that knowledge that we’ll put in our hours, our years, and retire in our sixties with a little pension?

Well, it can be scary, not knowing what the future will bring. But in many ways, the twentieth-century expectation of a ‘job for life’ has been a fluke rather than the norm. Until recently, and in many parts of the world today, harvests failed, wars changed everything, and people needed a whole range of skills to survive. Running farms, tending livestock, making your own tools: these were just some of the skills you needed. The idea of someone who spends their whole life screwing the tops on toothpaste tubes, perhaps moving up to supervise toothpaste-lid screwing some day, is destined to be a strange hiccup of history, and more to be puzzled at than to be lamented.

Over time, the process of industrialization has moved us towards an ever more narrow definition of specialty, often at the expense of having a decent grasp of many generalized skills. This process has often been positive and an integral part of building an advanced society, but it has come at a price. While we can happily celebrate the neuroscience expert or the mechanical engineer, many of us have experienced the darker side of this development: tedious, unfulfilling jobs working on such a tiny part of the process that we never get to see the whole. Jobs in call centers, on assembly lines, jobs where we push paper from one side of the desk to the other, data entry… the list is long and stultifying.

But the same advances in technology have brought a new world of opportunities to our fingertips. For those of us who want to break through the tedium of the traditional, twentieth-century mindset of work, there have never been so many options to move jobs, locations, or industries. We can learn new skills without leaving our desks, can start new businesses with the minimum of investment beyond a laptop and an internet connection. We can combine our hobbies, interests, and skills in ways that would not have been possible only a few years ago. The whole concept of ‘job’ and ‘career’ is evolving.

It looks like twenty-first century survival will be about a return to generalization and having a whole paint box of skills at your finger tips. Twenty-first century success will be about knowing how to dip into that range of colors and create something unique.

Someone needs to hire a web designer with a background in landscape architecture and a working knowledge of French? Or an accountant who understands the business of livestock photography? Being able to draw on your paint box of skills and experience will not just give you the tools to get by, but you may very well be able to charge higher rates or land a more satisfying job. You might not be an expert in the traditional sense, but being able to mix together several skills from your paint box makes you one of the new kinds of expert: the specialist generalist. In the twenty-first century, having a more diverse range of skills to draw from is an advantage: red, yellow and blue are common colors; chartreuse, heliotrope, and purpure are unusual; you’ve got to have just the right mix of colors to make them. The better you can do this, the more of an specialist generalist you can become.

 

Image by Flickr user Paull Young

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Take a break: sometimes achieving less can help you achieve more

  By Jennifer Stakes Roberts | February 27, 2012 - 5:13 pm | Freelancing, Freelancing parents, Productivity
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Sometimes it’s OK not to be productive.

We read a lot (especially if we are freelancers or run our own businesses) about being super productive and achieving vast amounts above and beyond our everyday work.  It can feel that having a day day job, friends and a family, and just getting by are not enough. We should have multiple personal projects on the go at any one time, from further study, to product creation, to networking and, of course, our social media lives.

And I’m just as guilty of it as anyone: I freelance, write ebooks, record informative You Tube videos, and co-run a company. Naturally, I still feel guilty that I haven’t read all the books I mean to, don’t blog regularly enough, plus all the other things that are never crossed off my to-do list.

BUT sometimes you have to let go. Sometimes you are ill, run down, burnt out, or 8 months pregnant. Sometimes you just need a break or a holiday/vacation. Sometimes even just a nap will do.

A very wise friend once said to me that no-one on their death bed ever wished that they had worked harder. As good advice goes, it is right up there with author Anne Fine (who wrote Mrs. Doubtfire), who came to my school and gave us the wonderful career advice of ‘find what you like doing and do that.’ Sensible woman.

If you feel like you have reached the end of your energy supplies, it’s ok to go away and recharge. Take a break, have a nap, go for a walk, take some time off, have a complete time-out from work if you need one. There are enough burnt-out people out there.

If you have already reached the stage where you are beating yourself up about your declining productivity and feeling that you are falling behind on everything, try setting yourself smaller daily targets. When you are reaching the burn-out point, feeling overwhelmed by your daily task-list can make you procrastinate to the point where you really don’t get anything useful done. By setting yourself more manageable goals and then allowing yourself a break or a change of scenery, you are more likely to be able to meet your targets, plus have a proper break to get away from staring at your screen.

Hopefully, by taking breaks you can get your energy levels back to the point where you enjoy what you do again. After all, many of us became freelancers because we love what we do.

Maybe if you take a step back you can evaluate how you got to this point and whether you really need to be achieving so much. If you could eliminate some of your task list altogether would you feel more in control? Happier? Would your personal life be better? Would you feel less guilty? If you took a step back, what would you say your priorities are?

Having an 8-month Bump has definitely made me realise that health must take priority to achievements, and that naps, a walk or a break are now an essential part of my day. Personally, I am just trying to focus on projects that really need to get done, and I’m putting aside everything non-essential on my task list. Focusing on smaller achievements is definitely beneficial to me, rather than feeling guilty and overwhelmed by all the things that I’m not getting done.

Everyone can feel tired and overwhelmed at times. And it’s ok! Just focus on achieving the essentials and put everything else aside for a bit. Take a break and step back: sometimes achieving less can be good for you in the long run.

Image by Flickr user mike@bensalem

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Quick productivity tip: Leave work half-finished

  By Jennifer Stakes Roberts | February 8, 2012 - 9:54 am | Freelancing, Productivity
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No-one gets paid for half-finished

Sounds a bit counter-intuitive, doesn’t it? Half-finished? I don’t get paid for half-finished.

But something I learned from creative writing is how to get over the writer’s block of starting new work. It’s not all about wondering where your characters are going to go from Chapter Ten, sitting there amongst the screwed up paper, sobbing into the typewriter (I mean, we have laptops these days). No, often the hardest part of having the sort of project-based work that freelancers and creative professionals deal with is the fear of that blank slate.

For me, it might be finding the right starting place for an article: you’re not writing about anything new, but somehow you have to find an original hook, an angle to draw the reader in. That blank page stares back at you. You begin to procrastinate and maybe check the news headlines, hop onto Facebook, or clean the sink.

Fear leads to procrastination; procrastination leads to despair; despair leads to the Dark Side. Or at least to getting to lunchtime with nothing more to show for yourself than a witty profile update and a very clean bathroom.

The solution I learned from creative writing is to end the previous day halfway through a sentence. Never leave things at the end of a chapter, all neatly rounded-off, with the blank first page of Chapter Eleven staring at you.

Personally, I find that even if I’ve just written the title and an introductory paragraph of an article with some bullet point notes the night before, I can start off the next day running. Often none of this will even make it into the final draft, but at least I have something to work with: the first steps have already been taken.

 

Do you like to start with a blank canvass or are you happier when you’ve got something to work with?

 

Image by Flickr user: squeaks2569

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No maternity leave for freelancers

  By Jennifer Stakes Roberts | January 31, 2012 - 11:46 am | Freelancing parents
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Bring your baby to work day?

One of the reasons I widened the scope of my blog and gave it a wee bit of a re-branding was so that I can talk about all the new things going on in my life and work, which will hopefully chime with some of you going through similar things.

I have a new business, Enhanced Freelance, (plug: now open to new members!), I have an ebook out, The Freelancers’ Guide to managing Your Projects, I have a really, really exciting project that I can’t talk about yet, I have a new direction with my freelance work… and, oh yes, I’m due to have a baby in 9 weeks’ time.

Now, I passionately believe that freelancing can be one way of setting yourself free from the tyranny and drudgery of employment. Ok, that may be taking it a little far (Dickensian images of workhouses and gruel come to mind), but I do love that my commute is up one flight of stairs from the kitchen to the study, that I can work with my enormous fluffy cat on my knee, that I can go for a walk at lunchtime in the middle of winter and get my daily dose of sunlight, and that I can turn down work I don’t want to do (up to a point). I like the flexibility that yesterday I did the grocery shopping when the supermarket was empty, and instead worked until 9.30pm when my brain is at its best.

On the negative side, I don’t get paid holidays, I don’t get paid sick days, I can’t really claim a snow day, I rarely get expenses, and I absolutely don’t get any paid maternity leave.

Maternity leave is one of the things that Europe does really, really well, and America does really, really badly. (Contrast that with Mexican food, excellent television dramas that run for more than 6 episodes, and fridges you can fit a small elephant in). In Europe, women get something like up to a year of maternity leave, with at least 6 months paid. They can often share it with the father. Dads get two weeks of paternity leave (often unpaid, but it must be offered.) Even the British Prime Minister took his 2 weeks. If I was freelancing in the UK these days I would be able to claim something like £90 a week for 6 months as a self-employed person. In the US maternity leave provision varies, but it often unpaid or is an aggregation of vacation days, sick days and unpaid leave. There is no state provision for self-employed people.

But I’m not particularly interested in debating welfare state models today, that’s just the way things are. I’m certainly lucky to be able to work at home right now.

I haven’t been able to forget that this beautiful little Bump is going to join us in not very much time at all: he does keep kicking my kidneys, after all. I am working long days and weekends trying to get everything outstanding wrapped up and finished before he comes along.

I do think that freelancing can work very well with older children; flexible working hours means that you can fit in with school hours. I have heard from many mothers and fathers how well being your own boss can help you juggle the many responsibilities of having a family.

What I would love to know is: how did you manage having babies and working (fathers as well as mothers)? I’m not making any decisions about how soon I am getting back to my laptop post-birth just yet, but I would love to hear your experiences. How soon did you return to work? Did you have to organize childcare? Did you ever sleep? Can you get vomit out of a keyboard?

Let me know in the comments or share your own blog posts on the subject with me, I would love to hear from you.

 

Image by Flickr user: Tambako the Jaguar

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