Days Full of Work: August Wrap-Up

Do you ever look back on a month and wonder where exactly the time went?

That’s August for me.

These past four weeks went by incredibly quickly for me because they were very full. Not busy, but full of work.

Lessons Learned: Days Full of Work

As the first month in a half a year that I didn’t have to travel, move, or take care of family obligations, I was looking forward to August as a time to refocus and get a lot done. And wow, but that happened.

Of course, as any freelancers knows, your most productive periods of time are often the least exciting to talk about. When your weeks are solidly full of work, you end up with very little to say about it at the end. This month, I:

• took on a new copywriting client, which involved researching and learning an entirely new area of the IT sector in order to write about it effectively
• began writing for a new website, Trazee Travel, under the Wedding Writing section of my business
• began writing for a second new website, which is still somewhat under wraps
• bought a website, somewhat impulsively, that I plan to fix up, fill out, and turn into a revenue stream
• put out feelers into the film and commercial world, and received an invite from a local agency to come in for a screen test
• wrote on average 10,000 words per week, total
• lost my voice to strep throat for a week
• found time to read 7 books for just for fun

Looking back on my month of working hard, it’s exhausting just to think about everything I got done. But it’s also incredibly satisfying to see what I accomplished and to know that it was all under my own steam. Freelancing gives me the sort of job satisfaction that I never felt in any other work, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.

I also found myself having the what-do-you-do conversation several times this month. And that, too, made me fall in love with what I do all over again. Listening to friends and acquaintances complain about their offices, their schedules, their busy work… it’s a wonderful reminder of why I do what I do, in spite of the challenges that it sometimes creates.

Worried About Your Website?

One of the most popular services that I offer is my customized website critique, and I finally got around to listing it as its own service.

Shameless plug time: If your think your website isn’t producing the sort of traffic and leads that you want, but you’re not sure where to start improving it, check out my critique service! Not only will I’ll explain what design and content mistake that are losing you business, I’ll give you clear and easy steps to follow to fix them.

Around the Web

1. The sort of work I do doesn’t require a lot of travel, but that’s not the case for all freelancers. If your job has you on the road, check out these 11 tips for easier business travel.
2. Quarterly taxes are due in just a few days for those of us in the US; appropriately, Michelle has an interesting article up on how to prepare for a tax audit as a freelancer.
3. That week of strep throat was challenging, and prompted a lot of people to ask me the question: Can you take a sick day when you’re self-employed?
4. I started re-writing my novel, and it is a long an arduous process.
5. The Creative Penn shares some excellent thoughts on marketing with images.

 

What about you?

Were your August days full of work… or did you enjoy an end-of-summer break?