Sixty-nine days into freelancing and I am truly a changed man. Why? Well, I can’t really get into that right now as I am too busy at the moment (billable hours remember?) so to keep you on the edge of your seats and give you a peep into my brain, here are is my list of top 5 things that are different since I stopped working for the man.

The cat is now my co-worker, seriously.

I mentioned my blossoming relationship with the cat in a previous post but today I caught myself sneaking into my bedroom on tip toes as the cat was sleeping.

“Don’t want to wake the cat”, I thought carefully. Think about this statement for just a moment, it’s a cat, sleeping up to 18 hours a day on my bed while I work! OK, time to go visit the coffee guy down the street.

Gourmet leftovers

Leftovers are the nouveau cuisine of the budding freelancer. How long can you make them last and how varied can your week get based on the same leftovers from Sunday night? The push test, the sniff test and the straight out “man, that looks like mould” visual check can go a hell of a long way.

This weeks meals have ranged from kangaroo steak sandwiches to the simple, yet elegant chip butty.

The elastic budget

How far can we stretch this puppy? While waiting for your next paycheck you can learn some phenomenal money saving techniques. It is all true what they say about not knowing when you are going to see your next paycheck, but it’s still coming and I figure that is what counts.

I am making money everyday at the moment, but in the end it’s kind of like having stocks… until you sell them (aka ‘get paid’) you are nothing but a paper millionaire.

This doesn’t stress me out so much, but for others it could be a nightmare. Cutting out the corporate breakfasts, lunches and three o’clock coffees is seriously keeping my trips to the ATM to a minimum. Cutting out on other luxuries are creeping up organically but seem quite natural and aren’t really disrupting my life.

Coffee at home more often, eating in for dinner and getting more creative with cooking or not buying so many things until the money is actually in my possession (although I still am an Amazon junky). These things are what budget conscious people do anyway, but for some of us it takes a different reason to pickup these valuable habits.

Work clothes (or lack of them)

I am a bit pedantic about my clothing ritual in the morning and have been since high school (I didn’t wear a uniform in Canada, so you had to attempt to look cool everyday). This habit has passed right through to my adult life and I will line up my next days clothing selection at the foot of the bed ready to go so I don’t have to think in the morning.

Now it’s quite simple (although still prepared). Going out? Going to the gym? or staying home to work? I have a brown hoody that I wear in the house. This clearly means, “Staying home and working all day”, usually accompanied by my trusty UGG boots seeing it’s winter… soon to be traded in for flip-flops. This also double as my “going for coffee” hoody, although UGG boots don’t dare go out the door.

Got a meeting? or simply going for a drink? Time to go to my trusty “going out sweaters”. My sweaters are now a flag or roadmap to those in the know of what is going on in my day. One look at my clothing pile at the foot of my bed and you pretty well have me pegged for the day.

Sleeping is the new insomnia.

Yeah right you say, “A freelancer that sleeps? You must mean during the day?”. Nope, something strange has turned my normally insomniac ways into a true sleeping junkie. I have had terrible bouts with insomnia all my life. Sometimes I invite it, like when I went to university and used to work all night and think I could sleep like a normal human in the days to follow.

Most times now though, I just can’t sleep. I exercise, I got to bed at a decent hour and get up at early… all to just get to bed again at night and stare at the ceiling for hours on end fighting the thoughts in my head and trying to zone out and just get a decent nights sleep.

Ever since I started freelancing though I find I can really shut off. I get up early, go to the gym or start work right away and put in a hard day in front of the computer. Some days I knock off early but mostly around dinner time if I have a lot of work on. Then that is it, I turn off. A glass of wine or a non-techy book and my brain wants no more of it, just relaxing time.

And now I can sleep, sometimes even before midnight… who would have imagined that? These are the diaries of a freelancer…