As I’ve been busy making plans and plotting my course to full-freelance-dom, I’ve been doing a lot of blog reading. In most things I’m a “look before I leap” kind of gal, however when it comes to my professional life, I do tend to study the situation from all angles before making a move.

Looking for inspiration
The Freelance folder in my Google Reader has steadily been growing in size as I add the feeds to various blogs around the blogosphere. Some I keep, others I delete, and then there’s the ones that I actually click on over to the site to read. (I usually just read the posts in Google Reader.) One of those special ones is Chrisblogging.com,a freelance writing site by, you guessed it, Chris! In it he talks about how he finds his writing jobs, how he structures his day, hell, he even talks about how much he makes on these jobs! Impressive to say the least, as a lot of people have a taboo about talking about money. As a noobie to the freelancing world, his candour is quite informative and appreciated.

Gathering strength
Now, you’d think that reading about all the adventures and trials and tribulations other freelance writers are going through could potentially turn me off of a freelance writing career, but you’d be wrong. As I’ve learned over the years as a technical writer, there’s always ups and downs; there are always days where you want to chuck the computer out the window; and other days where the VP of the company actually remembers that it was you that wrote that stellar software manual. At this point reading about all the adventures has made me more excited about the prospect of changing my career. I can’t wait to start being more involved with my career, of taking back the reigns and steering my own course.

I can go my own way
“Quality of life” is a phrase that gets tossed around a lot these days, however it definitely holds meaning for me. Having lost both my parents to cancer in the last 10 years, I am reminded that there are bigger things to worry about than whether or not my SME is going to comment the hell out of the document I wrote last week, or dealing with the headache that is MS Word 2007. The stress of work has begun to take a toll on me physically, so changing the quality of my life is a priority for me. I want to spend more time with myself, more time with my family, more time travelling. As many of you freelancers have stated, “have laptop, have internet, will travel.” That’s all I need: my laptop and an internet connection. I look forward to writing software manuals while at my cousin’s kitchen table in Italy, or editing that set of release notes while sitting on my friend’s deck in Vancouver. Quality of life is where it’s at.

So keep on blogging my friends, you’re inspiring me to thought and action, getting me off my duff and helping me make my dream a reality. Stay tuned to hear about the first dollar I make!