Learning to wait and not to worry

Hi! Glad to see you here again ;-)

I'm going to share something personal with you this time. It's related to work, so I hope it will be useful to other freelancers as well.

The last few weeks have been challenging for various reasons. Since I became a freelancer 3 years ago, February has always been a tough month for me. But this time it was especially hard. I was worried because I didn't have enough work. Well, to be honest, I had work, but not nearly as much as I would like to have. The worst part was that my husband (he is also self-employed) didn't have any new projects. So I started worrying. We had enough money to last for a couple months, but I was still worried. I even wrote a blog post about it which I later deleted because the minute I published it I knew what was really wrong and what I needed to do about it. Plus I got some really good advice from one of my more experienced colleagues, Ewa Erdmann (Ewa, thank you very much!), which also helped me greatly.

First of all, I realized that it was my attitude to the situation that made it so tough. Worrying didn't do me any good, it just made my life more miserable. So I realized that I needed to change my attitude first. Since I am a Christian, I believe that the Lord cares about me and my family and that "every good present and every perfect gift comes from above" (James 1:17) and I need to learn to trust Him and His timing for everything in my life.

So I decided not to worry about work any more. That's what I did instead:

1) Of course, I prayed and gave the problem and my attitude to it to the Lord;

2) I relaxed and enjoyed my free time: went for walks with my daughter, tried some food recipes that had been waiting to be tried for ages, etc.;

3) I did even more marketing;

4) I did more networking through Tweeter, Facebook, Langmates etc.;

5) Every time I felt I was starting to worry, I'd do all those things all over again =)

February brought a valuable lesson to me. Hope you can use it, too ;-) As for me, my new attitude was rewarded last week with a very well-paid and interesting project. Hoping for more good gifts/projects/clients now :-)

Your enthusiastic translator