Freelancing for dummies

From freelancing woes to keeping those potential employers on their toes, we give you the best of our First Jobs issue. From that first job interview to terrible officemates and how to work with them, Young STAR has all the essentials covered.

MANILA, Philippines - Freelancing can be fun—you get to decide where your office is and how to spend your time. Sometimes, though, being a one-man wolf pack can be a real pain in the butt. From living from paycheck to paycheck to having no office romances, we ask ourselves: are the rewards really worth the trouble?

Free time is a blessing and a curse.

People deserve a good rest now and then. As a freelancer you pretty much are free to decide when you can enjoy said rests, but it is a power you will abuse, and you will feel terrible and awesome about it all at the same time, never fully enjoying what time you have you try and relax because you could be using that time to actually find and do work. Expect a constant restless feeling that eventually dulls over time as you get used to trying to relax, but not really.

Your friends don’t think what you do is “real work.”

“The grass is always greener on the other side,” but you can never really tell people that, because you don’t have to deal with some factors like public transportation, horrible traffic, office disputes/scandals, sleazy coworkers, horrible bosses, and a lot of things that come with a secure paycheck, benefits, and possibly a management position. Still, I just want to say that we have our own problems, too. This whole article is about that, actually. But I just want to suggest that maybe we should all agree we are in a horrible capitalist system and no one is ever really happy except maybe celebrities and the uber-rich, and that we both have it hard in different ways. I acknowledge your pain, please acknowledge mine. 

You never know where your money is coming from.

As a freelancer, you are responsible for getting the jobs that actually pay you. It’s on you to not only do the work, but to find the work your supposed to do. Repeat clients are a blessing. Friendships are important. And if those fail we can always pray to the Internet gods to drop something on us like a ton of bricks.

When the work comes in, it can come in droves.

The amount of work that comes in is in no way in your control unless you are some sort of schedule wunderkind. I learned the hard way that dry spells are horrible, soul-crushing slumps, but being overburdened by responsibility and juggling multiple clients is also a nightmare. When you are nowhere near the middle ground, everything is terrible.

You will want to get a regular job.

I mentioned office perks, health benefits, and also possible romances as things you will miss out on if you decide to freelance, but you also miss out on reliable paychecks, and having someone else do your taxes for you, (figure out how to do your taxes properly. I am telling you right now) and well, a lot of other things I may not have knowledge of. You can figure it out. You’re a capable individual.

What I am trying to say is that giving up the freelance life is going to look really appealing, and maybe you should succumb to the ways of capitalism and get a day job. You can only coast by for so long, and maybe it wasn’t meant to be. Think about your future, man. You owe it to yourself.

Or we can say there is no right choice between freelancing or having a job, because no matter what, we are going to have to be responsible adults in the end, there is no escaping that. We will face the reality of having to make money for a living, and it will be terrible no matter what. We should instead all stay forever young and hope our parents never die and never retire so they can support us forever, or that we will win the lottery or something, so that we can avoid doing any work. Work is work. Work is hell. Down with the system. Expect disappointment and pain. God bless us all.

Half the work is trying to get paid.

You will find out that there is a reason most workplaces have financial departments handling these kinds of things. Getting money from people is a terrible, soul-crushing experience. Whether it’s just trying to get ahold of the people who owe you money, having to wait for any number of weeks, months or years before they decide to actually pay you, going through all the offices, bureaucracy, tax forms and shady payment centers around Makati, or possibly the indignity of “x-deals” and “gift certificates,” you will get a pretty good idea that these people, most of the time, probably don’t want you to pay your rent.

No office romances.

Freelancing is a lonely experience. You will be lonely. So impossibly lonely. No office friendships, perks, or getaways either. You will be jealous that your friends get to ride on a cruise ship at their company’s expense while you cry in the shower. A truly tragic thing to miss out on, though, is an office romance. You will never experience the thrill of liking a particular person in that office, asking others about what they are like, and what they like, mustering up the courage to ask them out, actually hitting it off and going steady, becoming the juiciest office gossip material, and having your significant other just in constant radius of your workplace for sexy shenanigans. 

Other things to be jealous of: medical benefits and a reliable source of income.

Your weekends are potential workdays. Holidays, birthdays, vacation days — any day is a potential workday.

It is a terrible feeling to have when you see your friends out in the sun, at that rad music festival, travelling, possibly eating at that awesome ramen place you want to try out, basically enjoying the weekend. You could be out there, too, you know. But nope, you are at home living it up, trying to make a deadline, and you have only yourself to blame.

Going to coffee shops to break the monotony becomes a whole new monotony.

You will want a change of scenery, and working in a coffee shop seems like the perfect answer and/or idea, and possibly is, but you will have to come to terms with the fact that you can’t work there every day because coffee is expensive, and other people are around hogging those sweet plugs, and that you’ll possibly just feel so guilty about how you have been there for eight hours only having bought a muffin to justify your stay. Coffee shops, man. 

It will be hard to relate to work-related problems of your friends.

We should never talk about our jobs and solely focus on pop culture and gossip about our friends exclusively. Forever. Art by Rob Cham