Freelancing Life

I don’t think I mentioned this in my previous post but I’ve quit my day job and started to do some freelance work. Freelance design, drafting and authority liason work.

How has it been?

To be honest… It’s been an adventurous month and a month where I learnt alot about myself and working in one’s own time. For example, I found that I need to learn to balance work, family, volunteer work and KOREAN DRAMA time or else I end up trying to catch up on work in the middle of the night. Haha. So if you’re thinking of freelance, you need to work on balancing out your time and having the self discipline to reach your deadlines.

It took me awhile (although I should probably had done more research on freelance life beforehand) to realize that it’s not easy and it means having a pretty unstable life for awhile. Until you actually build up your client base, you may go months without income. So start planning!

How?

Well, some advice I found really helpful was:

1. Tell everyone you know that you’re going freelance and what kind of jobs you want to take on.
2. Advertise yourself / create a brand to market yourself.
3. It helps if you have experience in the field that you choose to freelance in.
4. Plan your days/ week ahead so that you are able to reach your deadline and have the time in between for other things.

I read up blogs online that gave awesome advice and especially loved the one on Career Foundry on Secrets To become a Successful Freelancer! It opened my eyes to some of the things I wish I had done before I started!

If you’ve been freelancing yourself or just started, I’d love to hear about your experience and tips! Leave them in the comments below!!

 

 

Choosing “the one”.

Image above from here

I’ve been receiving a lot of advice recently on how to choose the right guy from all kinds of older “aunties”. Thought i’d share some of the advice I’ve been given:

1. Choose the guy who loves you more than you love him. Girls are more likely to give more in a relationship. Guys will only meet you halfway. So if you choose the guy who loves you more, eventually you will still be the one giving more. (Almost every Auntie said this!!)
2. Don’t say yes too fast. Tell him you want to meet other guys. See how he responds. If he’s willing to wait for you, then you’ve got a keeper.
3. His driving style will tell you about his personality. If he has road rage / starts cursing at other drivers, that’s a warning sign right there!
4. Watch the way he treats waiters and waitresses. If he’s nice to them, you can be sure he will be nice to you too.
5. Punctuality. If he makes you wait for him especially on the first date, you should know that you’re gonna be waiting for him your whole life.
6. The way he treats his mother will show you how he will treat you later on after marriage. The reason? His mother was the only woman in his life until you came along.
7. Take time to get to know him. Go for coffee, movies etc. Hang out with his friends and see how he treats them. There’s no rush.
8. You don’t want a guy who is always busy and going out. If he is, when you settle down, he’s going to be the guy who wants to go hang out with his friends rather than spending time with you.
9. Take note of the little things he does for you. If he does things for you, you know he’s a keeper.
10. He should be able to make you smile. If he makes you smile and laugh, you’ll be laughing all your life.
11. Make sure he can buy you milk powder It’s not that money is the most important thing in life, but you don’t want to be struggling all your life.

After spending an entire night with this auntie I had only met because she was sitting beside me, she said, “Have fun. There’s no need to rush and make a decision. Take your time to get to know someone because you don’t want to make a decision you will regret your whole life. Don’t worry. You will definitely know when you meet the right one. “

Feel free to comment on the above and to add on to the list!