A web designer/friend of mine called this week to talk about the economy and his job. He mentioned that in these current economic times, he believes it’s often ‘creatives like us’ who are the first to lose our jobs.
Now, I’m no economist, but I am a big fan of exact language, so I had to correct him before he got too much farther into the conversation.
“You mean creatives like you,” was my interjection.
I’m paraphrasing here, but his response involved a blanket statement placing both of us in the same realm of creative ‘employment’ whose inhabitants are at increased risk of losing their jobs in tough economic times due to decreased marketing budgets, blah, blah, blah.
“Maybe,” I said. “But I’ll never lose my job. Even if I have no clients and no income, it will ultimately be my decision to give up. Nobody can fire me, nobody can cut my salary and nobody can pass me on the corporate ladder.”
I think he grasped the concept, but he strikes me as a serial careerist, so I’m not so sure. The last eight years of my life have been a balance between freelancing, full-time employment, part-time employment, self-employment and (I’m being realistic here) plain old collecting unemployment.
But that was a long time ago. It took me a little while to catch on and say ‘hey, I’m in charge here’ and put my all into freelancing. I now count myself among the lucky ones to be working for myself. Yes there are added stresses, but, to me anyway, stress is just a code word for fear of which I apparently have little.
Look at all the things I have to be thankful for as a freelancer:
- I work from my home office via the Internet and buy gas one or two times a month
- My clients are located around the world – I estimate I’ve met 5% of them face-to-face
- Even if the economy sucks, I can find new income streams via the Internet without worry about the boss firing me for surfing the web
- My online network exceeds my offline network by a ratio of 75:1 – I am officially connected
- Nobody tells me to stay late – I decide when to do the extra effort
- There are no egos to protect, no gossip and no HR departments to hassle you with lame policies
I can certainly see my friend’s point about how tough economic times can affect creatives, and by no means do I consider myself impervious to the current markets. But, when my friend’s company cuts jobs, it means someone becomes unemployed. When I cut back, it usually means peanut butter and jelly for lunch – if I eat lunch.
Jason Pedley is a freelance copywriter in Clayton, North Carolina. He’s been hired, fired, laid off, yelled at, called ‘F#$^ing stupid’ and sent cease and desist letters by former employers. Now, he laughs at all (and thanks some) of his former employers while he writes marketing copy for his clients around the world.
