The view from the stoep
10/04/2008 12:37  - (SA)  

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Georgina Guedes

I have been home from my travels around the world for nine months now. Those nine months have mostly been devoted to launching a little work-from-home freelancing business, although somewhere in the midst of all of this I did manage to find the time to get married.

Since nine months is a suitable gestation period for a small business, I think that this is a good time to count its little fingers and toes, and assess whether it's actually a viable concern.

The first thing worth taking into account in any small business is whether it is profitable. Since I am supporting only myself, the fact that I am putting food on the table and maintaining a comfortable lifestyle indicates that everything is healthy on that front.

Of course, there are months where, although I seem to be working terrifically hard, the money just doesn't seem to be coming in. It would be a fantastic motivation if, at the end of a long slog, the Rand-per-word bank transfer arrived in my account that very day.

Unfortunately, things don't work like that. Magazines pay in the month of publication, which means that often, the gap between writing and receiving payment is alarmingly large, and the times between are lean.

Then there are the other clients - the ones I do work for, but the work isn't for them, it's for their clients, and they have to be paid for me to get paid. In a knock-on situation like this, payment can take place anywhere from overnight to three months late.

But, somewhere between the two types of client, the bills are getting paid and my bank balance is looking healthy enough most of the time. The freelancing adventure can, from a financial perspective, be judged a success.

Money isn't everything

Of course, finance is only a small part of the measure of success, and it's the pursuit of happiness that has most freelancers working from home. Speak to any group of freelancers, and they will all be fervent in their mutual dislike of fluorescent lighting, air-conditioning, inconsiderate printer users (who print fifty-page documents that they don't collect, the paper runs out, they don't replace it, who don't know how to replace the toner... clearly the scars still itch) and rush-hour traffic.

Freelancing isn't easy. Some days, rush-hour traffic is replaced by an entire day spent in the car, with an undercurrent of desperation coursing through my veins that I should be at my desk hammering out a story.

I am working harder than I ever have before, and my dreams of being able to take time off to make a nourishing lunch rather than eat takeaways or having all the flexibility in the world to go to yoga because I have a bad back have not been realised.

But there is the satisfaction of working only for me (OK, and a horde of clients who all have their unique quirks and foibles), of seeing the financial rewards of my hard work (even if the cheque only clears a couple of months down the line), and being able to take Friday afternoon off as the reward for a hard week of work, and all these are worth far more to me than some sense of security offered by a hamster-cage office environment with a regular paycheque.