Your professional translator

I don't know about you, but I definitely look like that sometimes after I've had a busy day. I've been a freelancer since 2007 and I know how tough it can be. Very few people are able to stick to comfortable work schedule from day 1 for the rest of their life. In fact, I haven't met such people at all. If you are one of them, please leave a comment below and share how you do it!

First of all, I'd like to share my impressions about yesterday's webinar on proz . I was really nervous. For some reason, teaching in Russian seemed much more of a challenge than doing the same in English. But all my fears just went away the minute the webinar started. It went very well. My Russian speaking colleagues asked great questions and I really hope my presentation helped them! Now back to business :) Today I would like to share a little reminder with you. It's possible to be working from home and to be healthy. We just need to remember to do at least some of the following things: 1. Exercising If you don't know where to start, here's my favourite workout . The lady speaks Russian (with a stroooong accent though as she clearly spent no less than half of her life in the US), but you don't need to know Russian to repeat each exercise 15 times ;)

I know I've blogged about it at least a couple times already, but I guess it's time to remind my dear readers and myself that no matter how much you love what you do, you need a balance in your life. Remember this post in Mox's blog called Metamorphosis of a too-busy translator ? Have you experienced those times of having so much work that you hardly have time for anything else? I sure have. In fact, I just came out of this translation feast time when I had to get up at about 4:30 a.m. every day and went to bed around midnight; otherwise my work wasn't going as fast as needed. When I initially agreed to take those projects I thought I negotiated the deadlines pretty well. But later I figured out it was a mistake. So why did I make this mistake?

Last weekend we celebrated  International Translation Day and I would like to send my best wishes to my colleagues throughout the world! Have you ever thought what would your life be like if you chose some other profession? I definitely can't imagine mine without languages. I would like to send my very best wishes to all my colleagues. There are some very specific things that I wish to you because I know you love to translate and you want translation to stay in demand for years and years. So here's the list of my wishes to you, dear translators: (actually, I wish the same things to myself, too!)

Happy Saturday everybody! Are you enjoying your weekend? This post is absolutely off the topic of translation. Last weekend my mother, my daughter Delia and I went to our favourite park in the city. Vladimir is beautiful in late spring, and this park is so very special! It is called "Patriarch's garden" (Патриарший сад). It has been known since the 16th century. Some legends say that it has existed since the days of Pince Andrey Bogolyubsky (12th century), but there's not enough evidence of that. In the 16th century a cherry orchard was planted here and the Russian Orthodox elite came here to enjoy the cherries and the beautiful views that the park offered. It was especially popular in the 19th century. Unfortunately, after the revolution of 1917 the park was virtually destroyed. In 1948, after the war it was renamed into the "Garden of 16 republics" (Сад 16 республик). School children helped the adults to take care of it. They planted the trees again, b...

A few weeks ago my dear Twitter friend Magda Papas ( @magdameta ) wrote a brilliant post for the Freelance Writing Dreams blog . I loved it and thought that I have to mention it here. Really, being a freelancing parent is a lot harder than some people think. For example, my mother and some of my neighbours think that I can easily fit a whole lot of other things into my day. After all, I just stay at home, right? I remember one morning when I was planning my day and was frantically trying to figure out how to handle at least 6 or 7 things besides work with each of those things requiring quite a bit of time and effort. This is not the first time when that happened in my freelance life. So here are some of the lessons I learned so far.

Hi! How are you? I hope you are doing great and enjoying the blessings of this wonderful season. Autumn is a wonderful time of the year. In February, I wrote a blog post about having little work . Today I'd like to share my recent lessons about having a lot of work. Pretty much all throughout October I was literally swamped in work. So I'd like to share some things I've learned throughout this month.

Hi! Hope your week was good and now you're ready for a new blog post :) This post is about some changes in my life and business that occurred since I wrote about my goals in winter. Do you remember my post " How well I have achieved my goals for 2010 "? It's time to see what's changed. First of all, my goal was to reach 150 readers in 2011. Right now I have 17 email subscribers to my posts.  I also have 4 members who joined me through the "Become a reader" top menu option. So that makes 21 people. Many thanks to each one of you who found my blog interesting enough to subscribe for it! I also have 114 Facebook fans and about half of them read my blog on a regular basis. I also have some readers on Twitter (to be honest, I have about 380 followers. I don't think all of them read my blog, but I do know of at least some of them), so I can say that right now about 100 people read my blog regularly! I'd like to thank each one of my readers! It...

Remember my last post about relaxing? Well, my body got so angry with me working too much that it decided to teach me a lesson. I fell sick with some nasty virus... twice. 3 weeks of virtually zero-level productivity. Terrible. If you don't want to end up in the same situation, please take some rest when you are busy! But my sickness also made me remember something very important. Little things that I really love. As I was reflecting on those things I was amazed at how easy it is actually to be a happy person. And then I thought that I would love to share them with you. Maybe they will make you happy, too... 1) I love it when I don't have to set an alarm clock to wake up early in the morning; 2) I love going outside in the middle of a busy day and buying something. It doesn't really matter whether it's some candy or a new nail polish, anything can work :) 3) I love tea: my Twitter friends have already noticed me talking about strong black one, but I also love herb...

I guess there's no need to say that we, freelancers, need to learn to relax. Being a workaholic won't do us any good. On the contrary, it will quickly lead to the burnout. Are you sure you want to feel exhausted all the time ? Do you really want to hate life from the moment you wake up? Do you rejoice when you lose the interest in things you used to love ? I hope not! That's why we need to relax. Yes, sometimes it means saying 'no' to a tempting project when it's over our capacity (there are other ways to cope with it though, like working on it together with a colleague for instance etc.), but in the end our health is what matters more than money. My father used to say, "If you love your work that's good. But if you work too much, at some point you will realize that you are working only to cover your medical expenses". He knew what he was talking about because he had three kids to raise in the 1990-s (it was a "fun" time here with no fo...

My blogging experience started with a post about my typical day. I am still not sure anyone read it besides me ;) ( note from 2013: that post is now removed ) I now realize how hectic my life then was, and all because I thought I could be both a full-time ESL teacher and a translator. I can't, and I'm glad I finally realized it last year. That's when I reevaluated my work and made a choice to give up teaching through Skype with a company I used to cooperate with and choose translation as my primary work. There were many reasons for that. This year I took only 2 students who could come to my place to study and I am glad I made this change. I feel not as tired and overwhelmed this year, and I am thinking about adding a couple Skype students next year, we'll see. But that alone wasn't enough to bring my life to a balance. This week I came across another great blog about/for freelancers. I loved the post there called " Living a Balanced Freelance Life ". Si...

How to overcome Freelancing Stress I love this article! It's true, freelancing can be stressful, and, just like the author says, I've come to the conclusion that it's often ME who's making my life more stressful than it should be. How so? Well, by forgetting to plan my workload, my budget, by lack of marketing skills etc. On the other hand, stress is an inseparable part of life of almost everybody. What do you do to minimize the stress level in your life?