Working Toward that Goal
My goal is to one day say goodbye to the world of telecom, and go full-time into web development. In a perfect world, I would sure like to be able to do that by April 2020.
I don’t know whether in the end, that will look like 100% freelancing, or as an employee of an agency, or a combination of both.
It’s been a little tough going on the freelancing side of it, primarily as I have this fear of putting myself out there, and so ultimately, I don’t, which results in zero clients. Last fall however, I took a chance when the owner of a small web development company reached out to the community seeking folks to help out with overflow. I filled out the form, spoke a little with the owner, but was passed on for others at that time.
Fast forward to April of this year, and the owner reached out to me out of the blue - was I still interested? They were going on a short leave of absence, and needed some backup while out of the office. Oh heck yeah, I am definitely still interested! So we had a meeting, agreed on some terms and signed me on as a part-time contractor. Woo!
Currently I’m only working around eight hours a week, as I’m still employed full-time at the telecom company. I so very much would like to add more hours to the roster, but I have to be careful not to overdo it or crash and burn. I have only been able to negotiate two regular work-from-home days at the day job, so that means I still have a nutty 1+ hour commute to and from work the other three days. So I squeeze what I can occasionally in the evenings after regular work, but tend to do most of my part-time hours on the weekend.
This is very exciting to me. It’s my ‘foot in the door’, as it were. I’m very happy that the owner reached out to me, I like what I’m doing so far, it’s allowing me to stretch my developer wings and learn things I didn’t know I could do before. And it is certainly cementing the desire to want to do this full-time.