Glamorous Things About Self Employment Very Few Brag About
Yes, it’s difficult. No, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Self-employment is not working with margaritas on a beach. Why is that image even desirable? Does nobody think of the sun’s reflection making your eyes winch and laptop screen dark?
You've probably heard about the downsides of the self-employed lifestyle.
Call it a freelancer lifestyle, the solopreneur lifestyle, or anything you want where a person is doing their own thing and is not a salaried employee. The downsides include:
- Income instability: Some months I earn 3x of the previous month, and in some months, I earn 1/3rd!
- Impolite clients: some stole my ideas, some told me to charge half of what I proposed.
- Time management: it’s surprisingly (and sadly) easy to overwork and still feel unproductive.
But transition always takes time. It takes time to adapt to new things and the initial mistakes take you to a better place.
However, there are some really, really amazing things about being self-employed that most people don’t talk about.
No, it’s not margaritas on the beach because I don’t want my intoxicated head to write articles. It’s the simpler things that make life better.
Mondays Are a Breath of Fresh Air
During my full-time job, I’d start getting low by Sunday evening. I’d check my calendar for tomorrow and the week ahead and stress about the things I need to do tomorrow.
On Monday, I won’t just worry about the day, but the entire week ahead. Do you relate to this? If you do, you’re in for a treat!
While being self-employed is a lot more work than in a corporate job, the major difference is the fire in your belly. Suddenly, all that you do holds a meaning. And Mondays aren’t a day you’d worry about.
On some Mondays, you’d be kicked to achieve your goals!
A Lot Can Be Done in 20 Hours/ Week
Yes, that’s less than 2 days of your full-time job. The amount of work that you can do in 15 fully productive hours is better than what you achieve in a 48-hour workweek.
The reason is simple, the human mind simply can’t function 8–9 consecutive hours in a go. Brief bouts of time where you’re focussed are better than long days where you’re working with shallow focus.
Plus, working on something you mostly enjoy (‘mostly’ because some parts of your work like finances, haggling, etc. are never fun) helps you work with sharper focus. Similar to the time you played as a kid and time would fly!
Yes, that can happen at work too.
You Can Go On Brunches
Earlier, I’d be too tired to go out after a weekday and weekends would be crowded everywhere. Now, I find it better to catch up or head out on a weekday when it’s nice and quiet instead when it’s crowded on a weekend.
Okay, truth to be told, this doesn’t happen as often because most people around me have normal jobs. But hey, the option of it being there makes me feel happy and relieved!
You Will Love What You Do
And it will make a world of a difference to how you feel and function.
Picture this.
If money wasn’t a problem, what would you do?
How would you feel every day?
Now, what if you were appreciated for this stuff? You’d turn up day after day, right?
Let’s go one step further. What is this passion of yours was actually solving an issue or impacting lives? You’d turn up every day with more fire to do what you want to do.
That’s how I feel, day after day. That’s how a lot of my fellow writer friends feel too. A simple sentence like somebody telling you you changed their life or inspired them to do something that makes them a better person is a more powerful fuel than a paycheck.
This fuel will make you focus and turn up day after day.
It’ll make each day a joy, and isn’t that a great feeling to feel each day?
Lastly
It looks shiny but isn’t easy. It took me ten months of actively side hustling to become self-employed. Even after my corporate job and before self-employment, I got no breaks, so that took a toll on my mental health.
On some days, I wonder if whatever I’m doing and feeling is too good to be true and vanish one day.
I don’t actively encourage just anybody to follow it because I understand you have responsibilities, that I don’t.
And just how scary the downsides are, this is a different lifestyle. The last part sums it up well because each day is joyful. Every day is a new day to do great things and even when things go downhill, there’s a reason to keep going.
That ‘reason’ in a corporate job is just a paycheck and a false sense of security.
So while there are plenty of things to be cautious of before you jump in here, most things are over-hyped right from $10k months to going all broke.
What goes missed are these subtle things that make each day so blissful!
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