[ photo courtesy ]

So in the grand tradition of weeknotes, I’m posting this one a bit late. I’m also not going to flog a dead horse – if I’m simply too busy doing then I’m not going to sweat missing the odd week too much, equally if I’m struggling for stuff to write about then I shan’t inflict my waffle on you, dear reader. But I’d like to try and see if I can use these as a way to look back on the overall process & journey of going freelance, as well as to reflect on some of the things I’ve been thinking about during a given week.

So, week 2. My time’s principally been spent working on the Goodby project, which has been really interesting and a terrific learning curve. Interesting firstly because it’s a knotty problem (and as a planner, they’re the very best kind) with an open-minded client, and a super-smart team of folks back at the ranch in San Francisco. But also interesting from a practical point of view, being that I’m working mainly at home, and triangulating between an agency team on the West Coast, and a client team split between London and Geneva.

Working at home definitely has its benefits – no commute (although the down side of this is limited opportunity to get Chromaroma points!), and the novelty of being able to work in your pyjamas has its own appeal! Avoiding distractions is pretty much the same as it would be in an office, insofar as the main culprits are net-related (email, twitter, IM, google reader, facebook, general noodling around), so the discipline required to remain focused isn’t much different. I’m finding the main difference is that working at home means you don’t have the banter and human contact that you get in the office, so the temptation to get distracted by email, IM, twitter etc is perhaps greater, as it’s the main outlet for talking to other people…..and being somewhat, er, chatty (read: gobshite) it’s definitely something I crave!

It’s looking like my next major project will be for a brilliant agency: until it’s totally confirmed I don’t want to count my chickens, but having met with some awesome people there and had some firm discussions about coming in to spend some time with them, I’m excited about the coming months. So if all goes according to plan, I’ll be based in their lovely offices for 4 days of the week, and working from home on other stuff on the 5th. Also got some shorter consulting gigs lined up before then (more to follow on those) so things are filling up.

I think that if I were going to be working from home for any considerable length of time, I’d probably want to look into a co-working space, both because my other half works from home (and as a record producer with a full studio setup in the second bedroom, it’s not necessarily the quietest place to work, plus I can more easily relocate to another desk, whereas he can’t so easily move a studio!), and because I think I’d go a bit stir crazy spending all my time at home. That and I do quite like making a separation between work and home – at uni I always liked to work in the library rather than in my room, so that I could mentally separate work from non-work, and I’d like to think of our living / dining room first and foremost as somewhere for relaxing rather than my office.

There are several brilliant options near me – including the Islington Hub, the King’s Cross Hub, the newly-launched TechHub in Shoreditch, and the Hub Culture Pavilion a little further afield in Soho. My discerning friend (and producer extraordinaire) Antonio Gould has spoken very highly about the King’s Cross Hub, but would love to hear from anyone else if you’ve spent any time in any of these space (or indeed have any other suggestions that you’d recommend). I don’t have any immediate need but would be good to think about options as and when – the attraction of these spaces being the opportunity to sit amongst likeminded people, and crucially, reasonable rates with the flexibility to spend more or less time there as needed.

In other news, I had a great catch up with the always-incredibly smart Chris Thorpe about his hot-off-the press FirstPlaces to support Race Online 2012, which gave me tonnes of food for thought. I was gutted not to be able to come along to Young Rewired State on Friday (thanks to the wonderful Tiffany St James for the invite) but am really excited by all the fantastic innovation which came out of the day, and never ceased to be impressed at what great stuff happens when geeks meet government.

On a more personal note, one of the factors behind going freelance was the need to try and manage my work / life balance better to get better control of my health – having spinal problems resulting from a broken back many years ago means dealing with chronic pain for the long-term, and what I’ve learned over the last few years is that the biggest barrier isn’t actually my condition, it’s me. I’ve treated my pain like an enemy needing to be vanquished, and my way of dealing with it has tended to be a case of charging on regardless and considering making any concessions to my condition as ‘giving in’ and ‘letting it win’. Which is of course bollocks. So a big focus for me personally is trying to get better control of my health and wellbeing by learning to respect my health issues and not trying to pretend they don’t exist, and thus to adapt my lifestyle accordingly.

I’m lucky enough to have a brilliant pain specialist who’s fantastically supportive, and a visit to the pain clinic last week to review medications and general pain management techniques was really helpful. There’s still lots of work to be done on the more practical things like getting back into a strength training / yoga / pilates regime, and actually doing the exercises given to me by my physio – but a huge part is the mental side of things. It’s something I’m going to have to live with, so acceptance is the first real step. I used to think I had accepted it, but the fact I’ve been trying to crack on without really acknowledging the need to respect my condition suggests that I really hadn’t. I don’t want to be one of those people who’s defined by a health issue – it’s not who I am, I’m many things, but I also have to recognise that it is a part of me that’s not going away any time soon. I’ve steered clear of personal stuff on the blog for the last few years, but writing this down feels like a positive step to me starting to actually deal with pain management, rather than just paying it lip service. So onwards, and hopefully, forwards.