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The Freelance Life Is One of Perpetual Anxiety
The comparative peace of mind that accompanies stable employment in a profession is not to be scoffed at.
I learned the other day that a client I’ve been doing freelance work for on a regular basis for the past couple of years is closing down their operation with almost immediate effect. Thank heavens, I don’t have to rely on this source of income. Freelance work has only ever represented additional income for me — on top of (while I was still working full-time) a regular salary and (nowadays) a teacher’s pension.
The money I’ve earned from writing (three books, entries for biographical dictionaries, reviews, etc.) has helped pay for a few marginal extras in life and reduced worries about cashflow, but paying the bills was, and still is, courtesy of the full-time career I had in education between 1975 and 2013.
After 2013 I took on a small role supporting trainee teachers. But I spent most of my time indulging (a word I would not have used at the time) my passion for portrait photography. I intend to write about the half-dozen years I spent as a portrait and aspiring fashion photographer separately, but its relevance here is in connection with the energy and optimism of the people I met in the course of those years.
