Today I have two things for you! First, I’ll choose the winner of the contest I posted last week, and that person will receive a free copy of Susan Getgood’s book, Professional Blogging for Dummies courtesy of me and the publisher, Wiley.

Second, today is my birthday, and it’s made me a bit reflective. It’s around this time that I always look back on when I made the decision to take the freelancing plunge; it was just about five years ago (almost to the day) when I finally resolved to go for it. What I’ve learned in those five years could fill many, many volumes—each and every one of them would need to be bound up with humble pie, too—but I thought with it being my 5-year freelancing anniversary, I’d target just the top five, for today.

First things first, though. We need a contest winner!
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I’ve known Susan Getgood for years, and when I heard that she’d be tapped to write Professional Blogging for Dummies I immediately thought to myself that she was exactly the right person for the job. As I talked with Susan throughout the process—both just on a general level, and because I spoke with her as part of her research—my anticipation mounted. The most basic way to put it is that Susan gets it, from the dual perspective as a strategic marketer and as a blogger, herself. So I knew the book would be spot-on.

Last week Wiley (the publisher) was kind enough to send me two copies, and even knowing everything I did, beforehand, about Susan’s acumen and how she was planning to structure this, I was still absolutely blow away by how thoughtful and comprehensive this manual is. You could truly pick up Professional Blogging for Dummies if you’d never blogged a day in your life and—after reading through the advice herein—start a professional blog and make money with it. Moreover, if you’re already a problogger, there’s still great information in here for sharpening your approach.
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People often asked me how I made the decision to take the leap into freelancing. I am—as I have noted in this space countless times—a fairly risk-averse person. That makes it kind of odd that I’m a freelancer, actually.

My answer to the question is always the same: I didn’t enter this path in the conventional sense of weighing the pros and cons and deciding to take the plunge. In my case, I was unemployed, had come off a series of demoralizing office jobs I’d hated, and in many ways felt I had hit career bottom. From my perspective, I had nothing left to lose by trying freelancing. These days I regularly give thanks for that horrible set of depressing circumstances, because I doubt I would’ve come to it any other way; if life had been okay, I never would’ve taken the risk.

But most people do come from acceptable career circumstances, by choice, and have to figure out if freelancing is really right for them. And there are countless resources available on the Internet to help you decide.

Today I want to draw your attention to an invaluable pair of articles, because together they do an incredible job of illustrating exactly what you need to consider on both sides of the equation.
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Today I’m feeling inspired by a friend, and so I’d like to talk about something a little bit different than our usual fare; and the fact that I—Miss Practical—want to have this discussion should tell you something.

I am a details person. I like things to be orderly, and I like to have a plan, and I like for things to be logical. No, I’m not quite a Vulcan, but still… perhaps it’s a reaction against the fact that I often am too emotional that, in my business life, I am all about the well-reasoned decision and the concretely-measured benefits.

But today, let’s pretend none of that is true. Rather, let’s acknowledge that to be true, and simultaneously admit this: All practical and no pie-in-the-sky makes Mir a dull writer. There is intrinsic value in the regular exercising of “What if…” It’s something I’m often not very good at remembering, and so I’m feeling very grateful for the wise words I was just reading this morning. Because while it is true that Maggie Mason started a bold trend with the advent of her life list, I never really thought that sort of exercise was for someone like me. And today I realize that it’s for someone exactly like me.
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For all of my talk about leveraging social media and being aggressive about self-promoting, it turns out that I am Facebook Impaired. Alas.

It’s not like I didn’t know this, really; my Want Not Fan Page has been sadly languishing for quite a while, because I wasn’t entirely sure what I was supposed to be doing with it, exactly.

Here’s what I want to do with that page: Leverage an additional audience through the power of Facebook. Here’s what I’m actually doing with that page: Nothing.

Oops.

And it’s kind of a funny story, what made me start thinking about this issue, anew, this week. Well, I’ll find it funny eventually, I suppose.
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Sometimes I feel like if talking about balance was the same thing as actually achieving it, I would be the world’s most balanced person, by now. Pity it doesn’t work that way. But I definitely appreciated Nancy Nally’s honesty about the catch-22 of taking time off as a freelancer, in her recent piece at Salon. She sums it up succinctly:

The entire process of essentially working double-time before and after my time off is so exhausting and stressful that most of the time, it completely offsets any benefit I might get from the time off itself.

(It’s really nice to know that I’m not the only person who wonders if time off is even worth it, given this conundrum.)

Nally goes on to talk about how she does find some respite, though.
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The most common question/complaint/comment I hear about working from home is, “I could never get anything done! I’d end up cleaning the kitchen or watching television!” The assumption seems to be that being in your own space, without the built-in accountability that comes from being surrounded by others, it will be impossible to stay on task. And for some people, I suppose that’s true.

I’m not saying that I always work efficiently or that I never find myself scrubbing grout in the middle of the day (hey, it happens), but my memories of cubicle life include a lot of things like filing into the break room to celebrate Diane From Accounting’s birthday, even though I didn’t even know Diane From Accounting. But there was cake, and so there went half an hour of my day (and probably half an inch on my waistline).

Working from home does present certain distractions, it’s true. But so does working in a shared office environment.
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Well, now I’ve seen it all.

I thought I’d seen all the lists—mistakes women make in business, mistakes male bosses make, mistakes freelancers make, mistakes male freelancing bosses overseeing women of a certain height during months that end in “ber” make. (Okay, I may have made up that last one.) The point is, society loves a list, particularly when it comes to a step-by-step accounting of how to do something right or how everyone is doing it wrong.

But now there’s this: Courtesy of FreelanceSwitch (which you should have bookmarked and should be reading religiously, fellow freelancers; do I have to tell you everything?), we now have The Five Most Common Mistakes of Female Freelancers and The Five Most Common Mistakes of Male Freelancers.
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When people ask me what I do, I tell them the truth: I’m a freelance writer. If they press it—asking what sort of writing I do—I tell them that I’m mostly a corporate blogger, which is mostly true. I’ll cop to adding the “corporate” part even though a big chunk of my time is spent on my own two decidedly non-corporate personal blogs. I think I add that to make it clear that I’m not just some unwashed social misfit ranting while hunched over a laptop in my basement.

(Because, you know, we don’t even have a basement.)

Plus, I do lots of writing for corporate clients, and there are numerous pretty people who send me money in exchange for my writing, so yes: I’m a freelance writer who specializes in corporate blogging. No shame there, right?

Well, maybe….
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So, a little time had passed since I was whining about the problem of responding to requests for information from readers. I’ve had some time to think about it, and I’ve talked to some colleagues and read your comments here and really mulled it over. The crux of the issue, for me, anyway, is that I actually love it when regular readers come to me with smart questions. What I really don’t like is when someone stumbles upon my corner of the ‘net and for whatever reason decides that I both can and should inform them how to do exactly what it is that I do.

In the former scenario, I am flattered, and I’m happy to help if I can. In the latter scenario, I’m aggravated, I feel my hard work has been overlooked, and (perhaps I take things I tad too personally?) I feel used. I may be cheap, but I’m not a cheap date. Heh. I require a little wooing, and my favorite love language when it comes to this stuff is Affirmation—I need to know that you understand that I work for a living. (It also helps if you tell me I’m pretty, though it’s not required.)
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