Katy Hamilton

Well, here we are on the cusp of the new year… the turkey is dispatched, Santa’s gone home for a very long and much-deserved lie-in, and through an entirely random process of clicking on things, I have discovered an amazing album of Menuhin and Grappelli playing duets (look it up – it’s fantastic) to listen to as I type this. It’s not quite six months since I cut the rope and went freelance, but it’s close enough for a little reflection at least, before we see in 2015 and I leave you good people in peace for a week whilst I go on holiday.

So what’s it been like since Independence Day? I can honestly say that it’s been amazing. Talk about “never a  dull moment”… I have written, spoken, taught, planned, plotted, played, dreamed up workshops, in a way I’ve simply never had the freedom (or time) to do before. And if you are considering the possibility of life in the freelance world, I have a few hints and tips – still relatively tiny pearls of wisdom, since they’re young and yet to be tested further; but not, I think, without some merit. Here they are:

1. Being your own boss is exactly what you make of it. I mean this in the best and worst ways. On the one hand, you have no one to please but yourself, and that’s liberating of course. But it also means the only person who can kick you into action, make you do that job you really ought to do but kind of can’t be bothered to, is you. Self-discipline is crucial, both because it will keep you afloat (financially and in all other senses), and because if you can be a good boss to yourself, you will have more time. Half an hour each morning of tedious admin – the email clear-up, the filing, the list of expenses and invoices due – makes life considerably nicer for the other 23 ½ hours of the day.

2. Time is precious. No, not in the moralising ‘get going, you’re being lazy’ sense of the term. I’m talking about what a great thing time is, how powerful a thing it is to be able to spend it as you choose. If you’re being a good boss to yourself, you can actually spend a good chunk of time on something over many days in a row and get your mind fully into a long-term project. One of the great ironies of university life, as I’m sure many academics would agree, is not so much the time to do the research and writing (although of course that’s tough too), but the time to get your head into the right place to do the research and writing between other work. If you have to break off, take days away from it, and so on, you then need to build in space to gather the dropped threads and give them meaning again. As a freelancer, you have that luxury pretty much every day. The converse, in fact, can become true: you’re having such a good time getting stuck in that you forget to take days off. Time is precious when you’re relaxing, too!

3. If you don’t ask, you won’t know. This has been a big one for me, and it boils down in my case (as I suspect in many others) to having some pre-determined notion of “But I couldn’t possibly do that, could I?!” without really know why you think that. Could you write a novel? Probably, if you tried hard enough. Or be on the radio? Yup, though of course it’s up to you to make sure you don’t talk gobbledygook whilst you’re there. Could you publish an article in the BBC Music Magazine? Well, you won’t know until you contact them with an idea and see, will you? In the last few months of permanent employment, I made a great long list of all the people I knew who are more established in this business than I am: critics, radio presenters, writers, academics, performers and so on. Then I wrote to them, one by one. I asked if they could help, or make suggestions, or offer advice as to who the right person might be to speak to about certain things. There were two kinds of response: a tiny percentage did not reply; and the rest did so with enthusiasm and kindess, making recommendations, offering hints and tips, meeting me for coffee and handing over email addresses and phone numbers. I owe those people a tremendous amount for trusting me, and giving of their time to get me going. In fact in most cases, they seemed to trust my abilities more than I did. There’s a lesson in there, somewhere…

4. Be kind to yourself. Success is relative, and without a boss or a broader organisation to offer you some kind of perspective within your field, it’s hard to know how you’re doing. It’s been six months, and I went into this business fully expecting to need my savings to help me and to be petitioning night and day for work. Now I find my schedule pleasingly full and my bank balance surprisingly healthy, I can already hear the little demon sitting on my shoulder. “Why aren’t you earning more?” “What do you mean, you’re taking the week off? Why? There are things to do here, you know!” “You’ve only got enough in the current account for seven or eight weeks in advance of now, then what are you going to do?”. It takes kindness to remind yourself that actually, you’re earning more than you expected to, and as you become more established, you’ll earn more… That you deserve a holiday, like everyone else… That salaried jobs only give their employees four to five weeks’ money in advance… a panic attack is not actually necessary, and that demon really needs to take a hike.

So, six months in, and I’m feeling pretty good – and I hope, for anyone reading this who is in the same boat as me, or contemplating coming aboard, this blog (and this post) provides some kind of help and comfort. In the meantime, here’s hoping the curtain comes down on 2014 as you’d like it to, and 2015 arrives with a bang, a shower of lights, and the excitement of new possibilities. Happy New Year!