July 2002

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I got a call from a friend earlier today, that I missed. He's supposed to call back, and if he does while I'm writing this, I'll fill in some details.

When he called, he reminded me that he's being laid off from a job the end of this month. He said he's thinking about going out on his own doing some freelance work. And he wanted to have my thoughts on the subject.

I'm not exactly sure what he intends to freelance as (there are several things he could have in mind), and that crucial piece of information may well change what I tell him. But in general, my thoughts are that it's not the best time to start a totally freelance lilfe, with the economy being as it is right now. And I would always advise against it unless one is financially prepared to deal with the dry spells. Depending on the nature of the work itself, there can be many more dry spells than otherwise.

For example, the business services part of my own work has areas with major dry spells. You'd think that in a college town there would be a lot of people in need of someone to do word processing. But you'd not be correct, in this town. Several years ago, the University started requiring students to come armed with laptop computers. These days, most of the word processing is done by the students themselves. When there is a need from students, it's for emergencies, and those can't be counted upon for income.

Most of my work in word processing comes from semi-retired people, like the man who came by last Saturday. I don't make much money from word processing. But that's okay; I've been stressing the other parts of my business services, like research and proofreading, anyway. Frankly, those are a lot more fun for me, and much more lucrative to boot. (Word processing is only mentioned online in case someone gets overwhelmed and needs some backup, since I'm not really trying to start a virtual secretarial service.)

So my advice to my friend will be to proceed with caution in terms of freelance work being the only income source, and to make sure he loves what he's doing. That second thing is important, too. But that's a topic for another day.