Just the other day, I read a post over at All Freelance Writing on the misconceptions people can have about the freelance life.
Among these was the lack of respect people in our lives can often have for our work hours.
It hit a chord with me as, just the other week, my husband had chewed me out for not taking out the garbage that day. “You were home all day!” he said.
It was true. I had been home all day but, in all that time, I had barely even left my computer, as I had multiple projects on my plate, and not a moment to spare. His presumptuousness made me angry, and I stewed over all the other times him or my mother had asked me to pick up stamps, or run to the supermarket, or do the laundry…all with the assumption that I now had the time to spare, because my commute merely consisted of the walk from the bedroom to the computer room, and I had no one to answer to but myself.
Little did they know that I was a tougher taskmaster than any of my previous bosses had been, and it was because I had to be if I wanted to stay afloat. Unfortunately, it’s tough to change the misconceptions of non-freelancers, but we can at least attempt to do so by setting limits:
