The past six months of work had been rough and very emotional for me – and very productive. You can easily tell that if you have read my posts prior to this. Before I mainly post about computers and all geeky stuffs that I do, then it shifted to a more personal theme that I liked, anyway.  Although I don’t regret and I consider my choice to work freelance and many hours as a good thing, I never imagined it could turn out very dramatic and lonely — at the same time rewarding.

Work Statistics

For the record, here’s my working statistics as freelance IT professional and a detailed comparison of the amount and time of work if I pursued a regular, 8-hour routine office work.

Daily	My Freelance Work	Regular Office Work
Work Hours	16 to 18 hours per day	8 hours

Weekly	My Freelance Work	Regular Office Work
Number of Days	7 days a week, including holidays and weekends	5 days a week

Monthly	My Freelance Work	Regular Office Work
Days Off Per Month	2-3 days during paydays	8 days during weekends
Total Number of Days	27-28 days, excluding holidays	20 days, excluding holidays

Yearly	My Freelance Work	Regular Office Work
Total Number of Months	12 months	12 months
Total Number of Days	324-336 days, excluding holidays	240 days, excluding holidays

Approximate Total Rendered Work For 1 1/2 Calendar Years

Here, we are going to calculate the total amount of hours I spent for one and a half years of my freelance work at home and compare it with the amount of hours working in an office. Using the data on the tables above, we get:

Now, the exciting question to solve is this: How many years would I have been working if my total amount of my freelance work would be translated to regular office work hours? Well, let’s solve that, shall we.

Conclusion: WOW, my 1.5 years freelance work = 4.05  – 4.725 YEARS!

That’s a lot! I can’t believe it. By the way, just to be clear, my boss have urged me to work for only 8 hours (he did NOT abuse) since the very beginning but I ended up doing more hours because our business is relatively new and there’s more work involved to make it stand by itself. There are other reasons as well.

How Was The Freelance Work?

For one and a half years, I’ve been consistently dutiful and diligent with my work. It’s one of my innate attitudes as a person who values being objective a lot, without sacrificing any quality that makes me a human being. That being said, I worked with my brain and heart – and they never failed me to accomplish things professionally and personally talking.

Working as freelance IT professional has been very challenging so far, especially for me whose major boss resides in Canada, and who occasionally works for other people as well from Europe and United States. So far, I’m lucky that I found very supportive and friendly employers. It takes luck to find one sometimes.

However, if you plan to venture as a freelance IT professional, I suggest that you consider these possible good and bad consequences:

• Get better pay. This is true in many ways but not always the case. It depends a lot of who your employer is and how much money they are willing to pay you. If you love being freelance because you earn more money than what you usually get locally, your boss will love you even more as he only pays you 5% to 15% of the actual pay you should be getting in his place.
• More freedom. In my case I work as a web developer most of the time, so all I need is a laptop and an Internet connection to do my work. If you work as a freelance, you can go virtually anywhere in the world as long as at the end of day you have something to show to your boss what you’ve accomplished.
• Prone to loneliness. Though you have the choice to resolve this by spending some time with people around you, the same choice sometimes fail as you can never know when your friends or family members will be available for mutual interaction. What I did to alleviate this was that I searched hard to find good online friends living from other time zones – which I luckily found. They accompany me everyday and makes loneliness easy to bear.
• Greater risk of losing your job. Being a freelance worker carries a burden of increased responsibilities with your job. Late completion of task or failure to comply with agreements can cost you your job in an instant. The worst thing when you lose your freelance job is that you don’t have a fallback.
• Get less welfare. You can’t assume your boss will express compassion to you when you are in distress. Despite your noble efforts to respect your obligation as a freelance worker, your boss will just see you as a money-faced person — just like him. Your boss will feel very professional by doing this – yet sorely very inhuman. In the freelance world, this kind of boss is quite common. If you are lucky to find a compassionate boss who treats you personally in a way that can disprove this, you are lucky indeed!

The list is long if I have to elaborate everything based on my experience, actually. I have worked hard to build trust from the very beginning which mainly emanated from being consistent with timely accomplishments and successfully upholding mutual agreements. If you want to be a freelance IT professional just like me, be consistent in bringing good things – it earns trust.

By the way, I’d like to inform you all some good news: I finally got a bed! Well, 1/2 of it yet since I need to buy the bed frame yet to complete it.

Still, yay! That breaks my record of 21 years sleeping on the floor.

Where Did I Find The Money

Actually, I did not. In my previous post announcing that I will have my own room, I explicitly mentioned that I’ve run out of budget for other things besides the plastering or finishing of the wall, and I wondered if someone would be interested to sponsor a bucket of paint for my room — no one did — so I have to find my own way to complete the walls — for the very least. I asked my mother if she could use her credit card to buy the materials needed for painting. She is always scared of bills. A matter of fact, for many years she had avoided to use her credit card. Since needs arise this time and considering that I don’t have my own credit card, she agreed to use it but she told me that I have to pay her the equivalent amount of the painting materials on my next pay. I found that better that nothing so I said yes and I got the materials.

The Painting Process

Here are the pictures in the past days when two of our neighbors (who learned painting self-taught) painted my room’s walls. I chose a very light skyblue color because it’s easy on the eyes and very relaxing. Be sure to check how the previous walls look like before the painting and how it improved as shown on the pictures below.

What’s Next

I want to be in comfort while working in my room and as of the moment that is currently not the case. Like working outside the house as before, it is still hot here and I still have quite a few gripes. Hopefully in the forthcoming months I can get myself an aircon, a small single-sized bed, apply tiles on the floor and fix the door. I guess there’s more work left to do — but at least, I have a room now, after 21 years sleeping on the floor in our living room.

What Happened Last Year

A year ago of same date, I was preparing to quit my software testing job from BHI Pro (locally Hubport Interactive) in Davao City, Philippines. I was sleeping in the office every night there to meet my client online from North America at 4AM (Philippine Time, GMT +8). I was offered a position with our local city’s most reputable and stable company, the Davao Light and Power Company (DLPC). However, during my application to resign from my current employer, somebody from Canada offered a job to me. He said I would be working at home to do an outsourcing job. Because I am so inclined with my dream to work and live abroad someday, I accepted it without hesitation and I dropped DLPC’s local work offer. So, I got a new laptop for a start, and my work at home begun.

Here are the posts related to my office many months ago:

• My Workplace After Nine Months Of Home Work
• My Workplace In The Corner Of The World

My Social Life Is Gone, Or Is It?

Many said working at home is like a suicide of social life. While somehow I agree to it, my social life wasn’t really zeroed. I used to work in a corporate office before, so I know the difference and the feeling. It is just beneficial for me that I am different than typical people — dynamic and non-traditional.

I had a lot of time with my family (and I say a lot with a little emphasis on “too much”). I met many friends online, too: Gregory White and Chris Morris from Australia, Ken S. from New Zealand, John MacDonald from New Brunswick, Canada, and partners Mihaela Lica and Phil Butler from Germany. Although I may never be able to see them in person in my lifetime, they were no different to my previous college friends, as they also brought me happiness during my daily work. It was sad though that one of my few online friends who bothered me a lot, Gregory White from Perth, Australia, passed away last June and my online social life went limped until I moved on. Since then, I struggled with my remaining online friends and my beloved employer.

I am fortunate to discover and to know that I have one of the best employers (persons) of the world, whom my social and professional life is laid with towards the future — and I will not spoil my happiness by saying the rest.

Working at home can definitely kill someone’s social life if you leave the steering wheel to spin by itself. However, if you are wise enough to realize that the key to happiness is within your hands and with what you do, you will know that there is always a way to keep your social life active and vibrant — even at home. Just be true.

Realization

During my one year computer home work, I realized many things. I have no one to talk in most times, but I’ve got so much time to think. Now, here they are:

• Money is a universal problem, but there are fortunate people.
• You work by yourself and you are not necessarily the only one who reaps the pay.
• Even at home, loneliness and self-pity strike. And they stab your heart as well.
• If you work with love, you don’t feel like working at all.
• It is necessary to pass through loneliness to realize many things.
• You can do work even if you don’t have a room or if you are on the floor.
• One can be very productive if the employer is not only after the money a person can bring.
• It’s not easy to work without air conditioning in the Philippines. It distracts work and not good for skin.
• Consistency of work leads to trust and success. And this is crucial for online based ventures and relationships.
• Money brings freedom, it may or may not bring happiness.
• Patience is a virtue and an asset.
• The farther the person is, the more nice they are.
• Working at home full time has risk of getting fat.
• Online friends can make you cry as well.
• Customers will love your business if you love them, business talking.
• You have to endure everything to realize your dream and work hard to realize your wants.
• You should feel fortunate because not everyone has a good job at home.

Another 365 Days Challenge?

As of this writing, I am still uncertain for how long will I be working here at home alone. For sure, this has to change one day. Working full time at home is just something I need to pass. I still have to experience other things in life. I have so much to do, and to experience and to learn — and sadly I can’t find everything here at home. So for now, I will just do my whistles, be patient, and continue to work hard, bring money. Opportunity will come along the way one day and it is something for myself. I feel like there is a great journey ahead of me and I’m quite excited to embark on it. I hope it would come at the earliest. If you believe you can contribute, I would be forever grateful to you.

Today, I reevaluated my workplace to see if things have changed in the course of nine months. I’ve been like a couch potato sitting in my chair all day long and working all the time – yet I was very productive – so no regrets at all. Work alone was not a problem at all since my skills tend to suffice the needs of my employer and I was quite fast adapting the business-work environment they embraced to me.

Last January, I showed my workplace in one of my blog posts. It was revealed there my real office situation at that time. Now, I want to show where I work now. There is not much difference but at least few things improved. I got a new chair, LCD monitor and new sound system – things that helped sustain my energy and zeal throughout the day of work.

To let you know, I have a daily work routine. I usually start my day by waking up around 9AM to 10AM. After taking a quick breakfast and doing my personal preparations, I immediately “assemble” my office in our veranda. My office table is there all the time so what I do is bring my laptop outside, my LCD monitor, audio-voltage regulator (AVR), my infamous electric fan, my sound system and my office chair. After they are all set, my day of work begins. The air temperature in my workplace during the day ranges from 28C to 34C.

My workplace is really unique for my Web-inclined profession. There are few things that are not common in a usual office scenario. While sitting in a corner during the day, several creatures catch my attention and give me little entertainment. One time, there was a stray kitten suddenly jumped on my lap while I was working and slept on it. Then I saw our neighbor’s dog chasing our ducks and chickens. Plus, I have an officemate in a soul of a black-capped lory.

I stay outside working until 6PM to 7PM (sometimes up to 9PM), then I start packing and disassembling my office and move things back inside the house. There, I assemble them again for my next phase of work that commences around 7PM and ends up to 3AM (sometimes up to 5AM).

As you can see, I’m pretty a hardworking person. I work nearly 18 hours a day (more than twice the number of hours of work in a real office environment). But see, I have no regrets whatsoever; bloggers and web developers like me do this for good. And we do it like this for now because we strongly believe that our hard work will lead us to somewhere else in the future.

And we do it like this for now because we strongly believe that our hard work will lead us to somewhere else in the future.

Working alone was the most challenging of all, but my love and zeal to change pushed me further and let me feel like not working at all.