#Freelance Life: Week 3
Another week, another week of freelance life! I think I have spent the last three weeks feeling more productive and happy than I have in a long while. But I have also been tired, oh so tired, as every project I push forward, every freelance client I add, and any check I receive, is the direct result of the work and time I put into my projects. It's a fantastic feeling, but it can also be very draining.
I plan to share my weekly break down in this post and one more at the end of April. That will have marked one month since the start of my full-time styling and freelance writing career and I think by then (I'm hoping anyway) that I will have gotten into my groove... till then, chronicling the weeks and looking back on them is kinda like therapy!
Monday, April 18 - Started by sleeping in. Not good for a Monday I know. But then business mentoring and straight to the client session you ready about in Wednesday's post. As soon as I got home, I ate a quick lunch and then dug right in to pulling out my huge IKEA bags full of stuff and tallying up and bagging the items for donation. They are currently still sitting in my car, but one step at a time right? My goal with ALL client projects is to process them day of or next day instead of leaving them sitting in MY closet/office/husband's closet's room which is what happened with my client from last week... So after watching some episodes of Kimmy Schmidt, I rallied myself to take on 3+ hours of dealing with all the returns from Monday's fitting. Doing client returns is insane - always, always, I am buying 2-3X the amount a client will buy, so it means going through each receipt and making sure the numbers match up for what the client bought and what I am returning since after all, this 3K is on MY credit card. I then make sure I have copies of all my receipts (I store everything in the Cloud), and staple the original receipts to all the bags for my assistant to take care of. I had planned to some of the assignments my business mentor gave me, but I was wiped. It was a full day of moving and working. So more Kimmy Schmidt, some reading and then bed.
Tuesday, April 19 - Finally got my butt up out of bed and headed to hot yoga. Did my morning routine of breakfast, answering emails and looking up flights to Colorado. I didn't have much scheduled today, so I spent the morning finishing up sponsored social media content for Elements Beauty Shop, listened to my Fired up and Focused videos (had two to do, since I didn't get to it yesterday) and made some general to-do lists. Managed to catch the mailman in his van, so I got to knock a trip to the post office for client returns off my to-do list! The afternoon was creating blog content (including starting this post) and my May newsletter. I took a call for a freelance client, answered some freelance emails, and then got ready for the Elements Beauty Shop event. It's always fun to catch up with friends and other bloggers.
Wednesday, April 20 - A loooong day that involved work for all of my writing clients, rug shopping (where I almost bought two adorable little kitties instead), random errands, and then frantically trying to make a projector work (it didn't). I spent two hours on it. Gotta love technology. Also gotta love old cars. My husband's ignition wasn't working on his car, finally got it, switched cars with me -and when I was done - I could. not. get it started. I tried for 30 mins, threw a pity party on Twitter, and then finally called an Uber.
Thursday, April 21 - Day 1 of only one car - I worked at home all day, but was very productive, if not feeling insanely stressed between juggling clients, making sure money is coming in, dealing with the cars, trying to get our kitchen remodeled, paying off credit card debt, saving money, painting/generally fixing up our home, looking to move, etc., etc. Needless to say, I am one of those people who stresses and fixates on every tiny thing and then it just blows up. Gotta work on this. I took a few minutes to answer emails and process things for Chic Stripes - I'm feeling like I still have no time, but am putting aside Saturday and Sunday this weekend to catch up and hopefully get back on track for Monday.
Friday, April 22 - Day 2 of only one car. Had Andrew drop me off at my co-working space (Heeeey 804RVA) where I did a Skype call with a client, client work, and then a meeting with a client. I stayed the rest of the day working until Andrew picked me up. Date night!