You wait for ages, then several come along at once!
It was only the other day that I was talking with a good friend of mine about the “joys” of being freelance. The way that it works is that you never quite know when the next job will come along.
If you’re lucky and you’re on a good run, you’ll get job after job after job, but that never lasts forever and it’s inevitable that you’ll get down periods which can very lean… and often a little frightening, especially if you’re a bit low on cash to keep a roof over your head.
So anyway, the point that I was making to him was that you can find yourself in periods of having nothing to do, then out of the blue you’ll get a rush on where your life is tossed into the air and you find yourself scrambling desperately to meet a deadline…
In the last four days, literally one a day since Sunday, new jobs have arrived on my doorstep.
One is a small prop build for the friend that I spoke of earlier, I’m doing that one for him as a favour because I’m nice. Another is to take an existing item and correct it, luckily these two have no real deadline so to speak, but I cannot let them drag on for ages, so they’ll be dealt with in due course. I also have a potential huge commission that I will be working on with Exterminator, but that one is being thrashed out as I type this, so we’ll see what happens with that.
Last night, just as I was going to bed, another job came in. One of those where something has gone a little bit wrong and it’s currently sitting at the client’s place where it’s needed to be at a photo shoot in London on Tuesday. So, as of today, this two meter tall prop and its baby brother will be arriving here, then all the various materials that I need to work with will come along by Friday or Saturday and after that I’ll work like crazy to “correct” the prop and personally deliver them both on Monday.
Thing is, my wife is leaving for yet another business trip quite soon, so I have to balance looking after my kids (taking them to and from school et al) with working on this prop and having it ready on time. Stressed much? A little, but I absolutely love it!
can i have a freebie job please
,pleased for you being freelance Graphic Designer i know this all to well ,should keep you out of trouble to
Hooray for income inrushes!
Hooray indeed.
Hope everything with the piece goes ok both the work and delivery
You spoke too soon. Bit of a disaster on my side. To finish it off, I had three very expensive cans of paint to give it a lovely red finish… rather coincidentally, JMC red!
The first exploded on me, the second lost all pressure and the third was fine. In the end, I just didn’t have enough paint to complete it as perfectly as I’d like it! Luckily, we found someone with a spray gun to give it the final top coat. Typical really.
All is on for a safe delivery on Monday though.
I have now decided to invest in a proper spray gun. Had I had one, we could have avoided all this hassle.
Hindsight is fantastic, isn’t it?
Does this mean you will now be known as RedBlancmange?
I guess so yes, you can also suggest that the conservatory should now be referred to as the “Red Room” – it went everywhere. I’m still finding traces of it even today.
Anyhow, it’s been delivered to central London, along with its baby brother and the client is very happy with them both.
Photo shoot is on for tomorrow.