If there’s one thing that I’ve learned in the last few months since going from permalance to properly, everything-is-a-pitch-process freelance, it’s that there’s never enough time to do everything you want — or, really, half of the things you want to do.
I had particularly ambitious plans when I started down this road back in February that involved purchasing web domains and alternating between doing work that I owned and would, in theory, get paid for via sources, and doing more traditionally freelance work; the reality, I’ve learned in the last few months, is that the freelance work alone takes up so much more time than I’d expected, because of all the things that aren’t actually doing the work: the pitching back and forth, the invoicing, the keeping track of everything as it’s happening so that I don’t make it to the end of a week, or a month, and realize something’s entirely fallen through the cracks.
(That’s to say nothing about the unexpected complications, like editors leaving outlets and my work being in unpaid limbo, or full-time staff stealing stories I was working on, because they’re full-time and can do that. Both of those have happened recently, too.)
I literally can’t imagine having done all of this and still having followed through on my earlier plans; I honestly can’t imagine how I would have found the time on a practical level, never mind being able to not lose my mind because of everything else that would have been going on.
Even now, there’s a second secret thing in the background of my days — something that I spent a good amount of July making the foreground of my days, hoping to get it all done before that month ended, but again, things happened. As a result, it’s been breathing in the background for the past few weeks, waiting for me to have time to finish it even as that time just isn’t available because of paying work that needs to be done first. It’s weighing on my mind, but I can’t do anything about it right now. Alas.
I’m frustrated, and convinced there’s an easier — less-time consuming — way to do all of this. I’d say more, but who has the time?