Freelancing at Home

There aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything I’m assigned to do plus my work. There’s a big misconception that floats around people who work at home, especially as freelance writers. This misconception is that we sit at home all day doing nothing - or worse, that ‘writing isn’t hard, quit whining that you’re tired”. Of course, this comes from people who don’t understand what it is to try and keep up with 3 or more blogs, 2 or more article submission sites and not to mention how long it can take just to research the keywords you need and possibly researching the information you need to write about. And let’s not even think about the time taken to do advertising… why should we think about it when no one else seems to think we do it?

I have 8 blogs that need attended to daily or every other day. I have articles that are half finished that could bring in money if I ever found time to finish them. I have various sites I have to check to be sure all is well, nothing is deleted, nothing reverted to draft, no scathing letters from editors. I am attempting to write stories and even throwing around various ideas for a novel - because I actually need to feel like I‘m using that useless English degree I just got.

I can say that just the blogs alone probably takes 8 hours out of my day. Everything else on top of that takes more time and of course, there’s always overflow that gets thrown onto the next day and eventually the overflow just becomes too much to handle and nothing is really getting finished.

But the general consensus from all those I live with or near is that I don’t do anything all day; I guess they think I sit in my computer area eating bon bons and watching pornography. Everyday I get eyestrain and think how nice it would be to look away from the screen and maybe go lay down for a while. Maybe even read a book that’s not on an LCD screen. And the longer I think about that, the more tired my body becomes because research, research, research is taxing mentally if not physically.

Why do those who work in cubicles get to complain how tired they are after work, but those of us who have the luxury of doing a similar job from home are told to stop whining and do housework before, in the middle of or -rarely- after we’re done working?

My father - whom I’m living with for a few months until I collect enough money to get to Hawaii - comes home from work complaining he’s tired. He and I have worked the same amount of time. He tells me I could at least have dinner ready when he gets home, that I could at least clean the house while he’s at work, that I could have looked up this or that or the other for him online while he was gone.

Oh, I’m sorry. So I’m supposed to work 8 hours a day, exercise at least 1 hour a day, cook food that takes prep-time (I don’t even cook this for myself most days), clean the house and everything else so that you can come home from working 8 hours and sleep? How is this fair? Just because I don’t have to drive to my job does not mean I’m doing less than you.

So listen up people, freelance writers and other work from home types are probably doing just as much, if not more than you! Stop making jokes about our cushy jobs and how easy we have it.