How Is The Work Situation Out There??

[Kelli Combs]

I was just wondering how work is for everyone.  I am usually pretty busy with four consistent days a week.  However, this week I only was able to get one job.  Everything else canceled on me.

 

I seem to remember around tax time everything slows down every year.  Is anyone else noticing this?

[Kelli Combs]

I hear you.  I see you are from West Virginia.  I do think it's going to get better.  It has to; can't get much worse.

[Diana Huffman]

Boy I sure hope so!

[Marty Herder]

I have always encouraged high-volume reporters into enjoying the fact that freelance can be, and is, feast or famine.   One month or season, you'll write more pages than you thought humanly possible, meeting incredible deadlines....and the next you'll be enjoying free time mid-week, to catch up on life.    Enjoy the tide, and be passionate about your hobbies during any personal time, whether it be extra time with family, the gym, gardening, etc.    What a gift.

[Mary Ann Payonk]

Marty is right!  Great advice.  fwiw, right now, swamped and can't get out from under it.  But also fwiw, that means absolutely nothing, because other reporters in this area can be slow and worried.  I think these threads are great for stimulating conversation, but they also make reporters fearful of, gee, what am I doing wrong? when others in their area are busy.  Again, agree with Marty.  When I first met my better half about 8 years ago, he was looking at reporting with a fresh set of eyes, and he gave some GREAT advice!  As a result, I've changed the way I work and am better for in.  On the other hand, there are some things that outsiders do not understand.

 

One thing he advised me was to work in quarters.  Decide how much money I wanted to make in a year, divide it up into quarters.  In a certain quarter, when I've made my quota for the quarter, just stop working and enjoy life until the next quarter.  Wrong!  Wrong-o!  Sorry, but wrong.  In this business, there's no guarantee that there'll BE a lucrative next quarter, so if you don't make your first quarter's goal, you'll be doubly behind next quarter.

 

On the one hand, don't sweat the down times.  On the other hand, I do think they should be used for productive endeavors such as PR'ing yourself, sending out your contact information to out-of-area agencies, even calling up those agencies.  When I first went out on my own, that's what I did.  It's time well spent for the independent freelancer.

 

So ... hobby?  What's that?  Must be a variation of "personal time," which is also foreign to me!

 

M.A.

[Kyung]

Week of April 23 through 27, almost a year after this post started.

The first three weeks of this month were slow.  One job in the first week, two jobs in the second week, two jobs in the third week.

Then the fourth week - busiest week of my career.  Jobs every single day,  I literally had to turn down 7 jobs, and these were really good jobs.  It was hurting me.  Then on Friday, at 1:30, the attorney drops the next-day expedite bomb on me.  I've loaded my scopists up and I started sending out the emergency signal.

How else do I know it's super busy?  I kept getting e-mail response after e-mail response from different scopists saying, no, they can't help me bec. they're already working on expedites.  Just crazy this week.

So April looking good and so is May.

[Scott Sinclair]

Things are still good in Seattle.  No major complaints here.  This time of year I like taking jobs out of town and heading cross country.  WA is a pretty state.  Scott

 

[Martha R]

Not only have I been busy all this year but recently I've been getting calls from outside-the-area agencies to do work for them.  I'm not likely to take those jobs because I have plenty to keep me busy.  I recently have taken a few days off because I was getting burned out from too many 12-hour days.  I've had to send work out to scopists, too.  But it doesn't seem like it saved me as much time as I hoped.

I work in Silicon Valley and it seems that people are letting go of their purse strings.  There are lots of people here who have gobs and gobs of money.  I had two real estate cases recently.  People buy homes all cash for six million dollars or put a down payment of a million dollars on a house.   Unfortunately, I live in a shoe box but that's the downside.