Don’t panic! Be a swan.

One of the biggest skills freelance has taught me is to not panic. Now for me this isn’t an easy thing as I have been known to get my pants in a twist over even the simpliest thing. I firmly blame my time in the support trenches for creating my ability to raise my blood pressure and stomp around along with a series of muttering inducing bosses. I come from a rural part of the UK where about the height of panic is a gentle raised eyebrow. I was introduced to panic during my stint with support and it has been a problem since then. It’s like a little gremlin that pops up and ends up with me having a collection of stress balls. I am lucky that I often get away with being in a state of panic, as have a swan paddling approach to panic in so much as I can look calmer than the often mentioned cucumber whilst maddly padding underneath for all I’m worth as I do the panic dance internally.

In another one of my famous perverse moves, I chose to go freelance again in an attempt to combat the fact I had just been told I had high blood pressure at 30 – yep if nothing that will put the re-evaluation of your life as a priority. This time one thing I am trying to do is keep myself in check with regards to bouts of running about like a headless chicken when I see only enough money in bank for a few weeks. Not an easy thing to do, but if you want to survive as a freelancer you really have to become a beast sans panic to a great extent.

My tips for controlling panic are probably the usual ones that all people have and range from making sure you do accounts every other day to see where you are at and what is going on; through to if all else fails walking the dog and eating chocolate – this is inline with a head in sand technique but less sandy. Sometimes, you just have to ignore the inner panic and tell yourself to shut up and get on with it. In freelance (much like life) things do turn up and you don’t have control the majority of the time. There are a lot of things you can do to make sure you have less chances to fail, but when it comes down to it if you want a panic free life you probably aren’t going to get one in this century.

Oddly, where I am concerned I am less panicked by being freelance than working – this seems the opposite to a lot of people. For me, it is about the fact that there is one person who can really make this work or not and that is me. I would much rather being in control of what is going on than being at the whim of others. For this reason, I am a freelancer born I think and going back to it this time has if nothing else proved that to me.

Freelancing has to be taken on with a more relaxed attitude than you are used to when having a fixed wage. There will be times when you can’t have control and others when you will have enough to be a squirrel of those barer times. Along with you being the only person responsible – you are also the only one who can control yourself. You have to find some way of reducing the stress – be it promising if you get through a particular icky field you can have that album on iTunes or letting yourself have a few hours to shoot that random thing on the xbox. We all get panic it is a basic human response – the difference is how you cope with it. Everyone is allowed a headless chicken moment, but whether you come out of them by biting the bullet and just getting on with it, or if you assume the fetal position – that is what splits people. Panic management is a large part of being freelance and infact of life in general. We all have different ways we do it, you just have to find yours. Instead of panic just be a swan and kick the heck out of the water whilst gliding around with a smile on your face.