Freelancers of the world; Unite and take over

[Spaceman]

How are you all?

Thought I'd just say 'hello'.

Are you all looking foward to another winter at desk; huddling under a blanket; with chattering teeth and a clattering keyboard?

Hi Dotty! What kind of policy, research, and project development in the cultural sector do you do out of interest? I'm generally in performing arts stuff (mainly but not exclusively music).

Poor you re redundancy! It's a scary thing losing your last link to salaried life. Before I had DS I had a two day a week salaried job on top of my freelance stuff. I decided not to go back after ML for various longwinded reasons. It's been great although it's taken me until recently to have enough confidence in myself to realise I am able to pick up work regularly and don't have to PANIC all the time.

Hi Boco! I know that twitchy feeling. It's the point where I actually consider the job adverts my Mam STILL cuts out of the local paper and sends to me in the post (I've been in London for 10 years so you've got to credit her with persistence).

LOL my mum emails me job suggestions about twice a week at the moment. Probably because I just asked her to lend me money to get my car through MOT.

I'd love to get to that point of not panicking and having confidence that more work will come along. For me, things have come along when i've needed them, but I can no longer afford the gaps, and my pricing is a bit rubbish. I wonder if having a part time job will focus me a bit more - or if I'll just give up on it once I'm occupied with paid work. Hmmmm.

at limelight's mum.
I'm tearing my hair out over a funding application at the moment. It involves the most ridiculous framing of your project proposal. It basically goes like this:
problem: not enough blue bananas.
objective: increase the number of blue bananas
result: more blue bananas
target groups: people who need more blue bananas
needs of the target groups: more blue bananas
activities: inject bananas with blue dye
sustainability: show the people who like blue bananas how to use a syringe.

Once upon time I was a journalist and imvho I'm a reasonable writer. who doesn't like repitition. It's driving me POTTY

Hello can I join too? I'm also reverting to trawling job sites at the moment as freelance self-belief and the credit crunch hits another low...

on the jobs thing - I atcually applied for one the other day. but I said that I didn;t want to go into the office and that I didn;t want to work 5 days a week. Said application may have gone straight in the bin...

yes I've applied for a few and requested I can work from home...strangely surprising that I never heard back from them

I've been scanning job adverts too, thinking this is a scary time to start being a proper freelancer.

Limelight - I'm heritage/museums/visual arts mostly, and I'll do anything that someone will pay me for! I think my strengths are in research, analysis and problem solving. But I need a better business proposition once my "tame" stream of work that has come out of my salaried work dries up. Sighs - really don't have the energy or self-belief for this right now. Did you apply for the Arts Council's assessor contracts? I don't really do contemporary art so it wouldn't have worked for me, but it's a tempting notion.

hi, i'm popping in. I do a similar kind of work to hatwoman (hello!) but in local govt/health/charities.
work is scarily scarce at the moment, isn't it? I've had NOTHING come in since June apart from a tiny piece from an old client. I've signed up for all the networking i can and am now on elance and people per hour/slivers - the lot!
truth is i wonder whether to jack it all in but a proper job doesnt fit in with our family very well.
i'm doing a PGCE (adults) to help me with the training i deliver and am going on some courses but tbh, i cant really afford them.
so motivation needed in buckets, please!!

hi overthemill - we swapped emails or messages a while ago didn't we? I'm busy til December but then nothing - I've been waiting for WEEKS to hear about some work from a certain enormous bureacracy in Geneva/New York. And am submitting a pre-bid proposal at the end of week for some funding for a project. but I fear the former has disappeared into a hole. and am mainly scared that the latter will involve so much (upaid) work to put together the full bid that it'll barely be worth it. I'm also annoyed that I didn't say, explicitly, in my cheeky job app that my 4-days didn;t mean I couldn't travel. really annoyed with myself about that.if they read it as me being unable to travel than it will definitely go straight in the bin.

hi hatwoman, yes we did. I've done some work for that organisation - had to go to an amazing Committee meeting chaired by an ambassador in NYC - was fascinating! Have to admit all the family came too and my dh came to the mtg - the family were taken out for lunch by my contact there and she invited dh to come along for interest and he ended up taking the minutes of the very important mtg as he had his laptop with him and the one they supplied broke down!!!! (btw,my sis had the kids, she lives there, just in case you think i left the dcs hanging out on a nyc corner....)
oh the heady days of real work when i commanded respect and a security pass and ooh all the rest of it...
but that was a freelance gig and it was soooo much fun (and ended up doing some real good too, in caribbean and usa and holland i think)

Oh the glamour overthemill!

Here's me wondering whether to go for a poo before or after going to the photocopy shop!!

well now i'm trying to decide whether to buy the shopping from asda or lidl
but at least the memories linger on to warm me in myy poverty stricken old age....

Hello everyone! I haven't looked at this thread for a while but it is nice to see others in the same boat. I have two weeks now until my maternity leave starts - wooohhoooo! When I go back to freelancing I'll have three little people to juggle as well as everything else - is that even possibe???

I've done hardly any work today because I had antenatal appointment, then went to aqua natal later - no time for work!!

I've not done much yesterday or today - getting ready for my girly weekend in London.

Gow my hair trimmed - fringe is now like Erin O'Connor aka bowl cut! Eyelash and eyebrow tint and facial today. Tomorrow panic clothes buying!

No more work till Monday morning!! Yay!!

LOVL at blue bananas.

I have been writing up ideas for two different tv jobs this week and trying to stop a knock back on one banjax my confidence on the other (or entirely). A real effort but made a lot of progress today.

Boco - you're an artist. That's what you do and who you are. Make some big bold moves for your art. It will make you more confident and it's good in a Noel Edmonds cosmic ordering, karmic styleeeee.

Every day I put an iota of thought into what I'm wearing. Then I get back from the school run and throw a donkey brown fleece that must be 15 years old over the top. I have an oil filled radiator and have had it on a couple of times this week.

I feel a great sense of warmth from this chilly community I'm part of!

Hi can I join in as well? Am a fellow freelancer and wanted to ask - how do you budget your money? Do you budget in the way you would with a salaried job so X amount for clothes, bills, food etc or do you budget according to what you have got in at that point and cut the cloth to fit. Am asking because I have always done the former but am going through one of those panicky stages of wondering where the next payment is coming from (always has up to now for 2 years now so get VERY annoyed at myself letting myself panic again). Basically I guess what I am asking is - is it ok for me to go and but a new winter coat and shoes (needed-not surplus at all) ?

has anyone got any thoughts on this - I need some perspective. I do some of my work through a partnerhsip of consultants. Earlier this year I told the manager of this partnership that whether or not I could attend the launch of a report I had co-authored would depend on other commitments. a few weeks later she sent an email (to me and some others involved in the project) asking about availability on 2 potential dates. I'm afraid I didn;t reply. fast forward several more weeks and I find out, by accident, that the launch is in a couple of weeks' time. AIBU to have expected to have at least been told it was happening? Or was the manager reasonable to just forget about me because I didn;t reply about potential dates?

Not reasonable - but maybe understandable? Maybe she sorted her replies from the last one into a folder and then replied to those ones in there and forgot about you?
How many people are involved - too many for her to understandably to have missed your name?
Is she arsey with you any other times?

hello, can I join in too.

Up until now I've worked in tv, but my one day a week contract has just expired as they've run out of money. So my life is divided between a desperate scrabble for something to do now, and trying to work out a whole other career (tv is the least child friendly industry ever, with the possible exception of Victorian chimney-sweeping). And right now I am sat at my desk with a stinking cold trying to work up the motivation to do anything at all.

Hatwoman - that kind of miscommunication used to happen to me all the time. It's being part time, and not being in the office and in front of people (and, in my case and quite possibly yours, working for a thoughtless idiot). But it's impossible not to be irate, it makes one feel utterly incidental to the whole thing.

thanks for the replies. dh said "never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence". I think it's a good maxim. I think part of the problem is that when you're freelance you feel just that extra bit vulnerable and possibly more paranoid about such things. I think the other issue is that the work I do is work we all believe in - but, on the other hand, it's our living. So things like attending and/or speaking at an event like this are fuzzy in terms of pay. (ie we attend them out of the kindness of our hearts/to network ) So, if I were the manager I would possibly wonder if whether asking people to come (and speak) was taking the piss/hassling them to do unpaid work when they don't have a salary. I'm going to speak to her today, with no incriminations/accusations and just tell her I'm available (still think she should have told me about it but it's not worth getting arsey about...)

Mmm, hatwoman, I think your DH has a good philosophy. I will try to remember that.

Hope you don't mind me joining in - like all freelancers I spend a lot of time on my tod, and I'm in the middle of nowhere to boot!

I do freelance copy/marketing depending on what I can get! I've had a better year than last year but still short of work. I can't work out whether it's my personality/ my skills/ the market/ rural back-end-of-nowhere-dom or what...

...and I have my small, plug-in electric heater on. Bloomin' chilly, it is.

Back from London to a sick house! Ds and Dh both have the 5 day fever thingy. ds in bed and has been asleep for over 3 hours - poor thing.

God knows if he'll sleep tonight or not.

Hello freelancers. I've just started my maternity leave today (need to post MATB1 form that says I've finished work) and it feels soooo strange because here I am at home, children at school and nursery, and no work to do. No emails to answer. No-one needs me! I've been cleaning the overn instead.

Hello, I linger and watch this thread. I'm struggling with what thingy - sorry, is it hatwoman's husband said - I like the idea of it but frett on it and get sidetracked by getting paranoid, because I'm working by myself and don't talk to other people in an office about things, so I get all sorts of scenarios playing out in my mind.

Now I sound like a right nutter so I'll go back to watching you all from afar xx