Confessions of a Happy Housewife
New Year, New Career
Some women change their haircuts, others change certain features in their wardrobe, I am writing this post to inspire you to change your professional realization, especially if you are itching for that change. If you feel the burn-out syndrome, maybe it is a high-time to consider a new career. Life is too short to sit on a desk and do something you hate. In this post, I would like to touch on self-employment and its benefits and talk about its advantages and disadvantages.
I had many reasons to turn to self-employment. Firstly, nowadays the labour market is in recession as everything else and it is harder and harder for people, to find good career realization in accordance to their degree. I should know, I graduated with Psychology and Criminology and the field is so competitive that I need to complete courses to enhance my skills, have years of prior experience, voluntary work and unpaid internships. Still there is no guarantee that this will get me anywhere. Sounds familiar to you? A lot of graduates my age feel the same. For this reason more and more young people are relying on their knowledge and talents and are headed to self-employment. Luckily for them with the help of Internet and technologies this is easier than ever. Why am I sharing this with you? Because I am one of those people.
As a newly wed I decided that I would like to devote the majority of my time for housekeeping and organization. Being a good housewife doesn’t seem outdated to me and I wanted to give my best in order to ensure Stephen and I live in harmony, save money and have an organized and clean home. One could, on a couple of occasions, call professional cleaning services in Sydenham to clean the home, but you cannot always entrust strangers with its proper organisation. If it seems that I am suggesting you to be a stay-at-home wife, you are right! That’s exactly what I am trying to do. In that moment feminists will start making plans how to stone me, but bare with me and I will tell you how staying at home is not going to interfere with your career development and will buy your freedom.
Benefits of self-employment:
1. The Internet and other technologies have now made it easier than ever to find online potential customers and sell your product. You can set-up an online shop or use your talent and work as a freelancer. Can you draw? Then maybe you can create amazing logos, illustrations or designs. If you write as a hobby, maybe it is time to ditch your personal journal and start your career as a freelance copywriter. You can write articles for SEO, content for webpages, short stories for kids or simply transcribe, proof-read and edit. Shall I continue? Okay, let me give you more ideas: If you love your voice you can get paid by the hour to do voice-overs. If you are a web-designer, but can’t find a paid full-time job then you can do what you are best at while sitting at home. There are websites which serve as platforms for this type of services and will help you get in touch with companies and clients.
What do you need to do for the purpose: Find what you are passionate about. Sort out and think about your skills and talents. Organise your free time and register in websites. It may sound risky, but you can be sure that people will find you and will start to give you jobs. Sort out your contacts and keep in touch with potential and previous customers. Once the word spreads that you are good and efficient at what you do, you will rate higher and people will queue for your services.
2. Work as much as you can in times that suit you best – you are your own boss. When you work from home as a freelancer, you can work in times that are convenient for you and suit your creative mood. If you are not a morning person, you can say “Goodbye!” to the 6-7 am alarm clock and start working on your own terms. This will give you freedom to go out whenever you like, take a day off and engage in activities that inspire you.
What do you need for the purpose: To be extremely organized. Time-management is crucial when it comes to freelancing. All this freedom must be helping you work and not helping you procrastinate. The logo is not going to design itself, neither is the 700 words article going to magically type itself. Whatever you do, try to work 8 hours a day, even if you don’t have standing orders. You can use your free time to read about how to design better logos, to study the competition, or to enhance your skills by researching the field.
Image credit: deviantart.com
3. You can cook, clean and look after your kids while earning money. It takes half an hour to prepare something and place it in the oven. In the next hour or two while it is roasting and preparing you can unleash your creativity and work. The same applies to doing the laundry. While the laundry is being washed you can design a logo, that costs around $30. Then go fold your laundry, take a short break and continue with the next project. Ain’t that the best type of work?
What do you need for the purpose: To set up a separate working area, where you can concentrate on your work. You can still supervise everything, but you need a working spot and shouldn’t clutter your living room or bedroom with papers and other working materials. Your children should also know that mommy is working there and shouldn’t be bothered unless it is something really important.
The only disadvantage of self-employment is that you don’t get constant money. There are days in which you will have more work and days in which you will have nothing. You have to rely on other people to keep coming back to you for work and sometimes you can get a writers block for instance. However, these are the risks. As you have probably heard the famous expression: “No guts, no glory!” How much does your freedom cost?
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career advice, self-employment
