I am currently freelancing from home, from my own office/studio space. A place where I can not only create paid design/production work, but can make music, sculptures, paintings, and models too. It’s a place I enjoy hanging out in. It’s clean-ish (depending on the needs of the job at hand) and quiet during the day, warm & dry, and the best part is it requires zero commute time to get to. So I don’t mind getting to an item at 6:30am one day, or answering a panicked email at 11:00pm the next day. I can pop laundry in as I walk to the bathroom. I can do a grocery shop over lunch. But best of all I’m here to drop my kids off at school in the morning, and available to pick them up at the end of their day. I don’t have to spend four hours a day, five/six days a week traveling downtown, and then across town, then walking several blocks to a job. I’ve excised that demon.
My topic wasn’t WFH, but the space in which I operate. I’ve worked places with no assigned seating or computers, in an open room on tables, in a bank of cubicles, and in a couple of offices of my own with a door I could shut, an air vent of my own I could manipulate, and my own lighting. Being secluded by myself was always the best for me. Collaboration is great, and loads of fun, but the bulk of my labour required very little of it. As normally my bread & butter item in my workload was production. Retrofitting someone else’s art work to fit new specs. A style guide answers the most basic questions, and it was just a matter of producing enough of the artwork to suit all the different brands, sub brands, and partner brands to stay afloat. I do not miss firing off 115 projects a week, every week, until the new fiscal when planners, and bulk sell sheet orders would come my way, and I’d do double, to nearly triple that. Yikes. My wrist fried out, and my eyes went twitchy, and I was not a very kind person. I don’t miss any of that, except the steady pay cheque.
The cool thing now is that when I have a quiet period, of hours, days, or weeks, I can tackle a DIY project, or build in my wood shop, or paint/sculpt/draw in my office, ready to answer a phone call or email. Some times I can even pick up a guitar and strum along to music for a spell. I’m contract, and freelance so I’m not tied go an eight hour day, with a keyboard counter, or a clock watching supervisor. Thank god! I’m here and available and you only pay for the hours you use. Works great for all involved.
Hot lunches, and a semi private bathroom, shower and laundry on site. Video games and movies on hand. A gym with weights. What more could a person ask for. Oh yeah – no people though. No external interactions 98% of the time. Ah – PERFECTION!
I tell you what. I could accomplish more at home in 3.5 hrs than I ever did in an office over 8. No walk by’s, no drop ins, no gather rounds or team meetings, no memos or circle the wagon moments. All work, no fluff, and no in office pantomime of walking to talk to all the right people just to be seen, and sound busy. It really is fantastic to drop all of those extra steps and just get to do the work I love. Yes I have to send invoices, and do my own books, and plan around delays in payment or lull periods. But freelancing offers me so much more family time while I have young kids that none of that matters all that much. Glorious. But, I’ve always had a spouse that out earned me by a wide margin, even at my highest paying job, so there is that to consider. It was cheaper in the end for me to take a pay cut, but for us to not have to pay before & after school care costs for two kids, plus sitters for pa days, winter break, and march break, and the whole summer.
How do you have your work space set up? How do you like where you are? What would you change? What are you able to change? Take it easy.
Greatwall Studios Graphic Design 