Posts by webweaver
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Up Front: Home is Where the - Ooo, shiny!, in reply to Scott A,
But, yes, this does also mean I utterly respect braver people who can do the whole hog and say “screw working for the man, I’m gonna spend all day wearing no pants to make my money!” I think I’d need to see more reliable remuneration on the horizon to take that step. And I guess this is for another thread – how have people made that jump, out from the salaried ‘security’ of employment to self-employment?
As someone who's been self-employed (sole trader/contractor/freelancer) for around eight out of the last 14 years (with a couple of periods of employment along the way), I would say that a number of elements are useful to have in place before you make the jump - but once you do jump, being self-employed can be waaaaay more financially advantageous than working for the Man.
The important elements (IMO) are as follows:
1) The industry you're in can make a big difference to the success or failure of going solo.
For example, the web industry and technology in general seem to lend themselves very well to contracting and freelancing, not least because as you're working in a virtual world, you can just as easily do it from a home office as from your client's place of work. Plus it's a specialised world where, if you get good at what you do, your reputation will do most of the contract-finding for you. Word of mouth recommendations are gold.
I imagine there are other fields equally well-suited to contracting - film-making and media in general also come to mind. But if you're in an industry where you need something only an employer can provide - like I dunno, heavy machinery or something, I guess it's not going to be as easy to be a freelancer.
2) I think these days you probably need some fairly heavy-duty work experience on your CV before you become self-employed.
I've been in the web industry for over 14 years now, and I actually started off as self-employed, basically because the break I got into the industry in the first place was a contract position. However, I think jumping straight into a new career as a contractor would be much harder to do these days, so I would recommend you get a few years as an employee under your belt first.
As a contractor I am expected to be an expert in my field, be pretty much entirely self-motivated and self-managing, and not need any training or hand-holding. I'm often contracted to join a team at some random stage in the web dev process, grasp the essentials of my task(s) with very little input from the project manager, and then I'm expected to get on with it. Hit the ground running, plug-and-play, all that kind of stuff. And when I'm done, I'm outta there.
My job is to make everything I'm involved in as easy as possible for the rest of the team, and to deliver my part of the project on-time, on-budget, pixel-perfectly and without any fuss. You'd need to have quite a bit of experience before you would feel confident enough to agree to that, I reckon.
3) The third element I think you need is a decent network. Like I said, word-of-mouth recommendations are what keep many of us going, and you need to have the contacts in order to do that. I haven't ever advertised my services (apart from via my website) and yet I'm pretty much booked solid all the time. You'd be amazed at how many contract jobs there are that are never even advertised - they just get handed out to people who know people...
Again, the web industry is a good one for that - it's not that big, and most of us know and have worked with lots of others of us, which means you come across the same people more than once over the years - and if you've worked with someone before and your name comes up as a possible contractor, and you've done good work, then they're quite likely to recommend you.
As a result, one of the biggest and most important aspects of working in a small industry like mine is never EVER burn your bridges. Someone you work alongside this year might have moved jobs and become someone who maybe wants to pay you to do a contract for them a few years later. Always be nice, always do your best, and if the time comes for you to leave somewhere because it's not working out for you, quit in a respectful and good-spirited manner. You never know who you're gonna cross paths again with in the future!
I reckon if you've got those three elements in place, you're well on your way to being able to successfully make the leap into self-employment.
It's definitely useful to have a few thou tucked away to tide you over until you get your first contract, and also for the occasional slow days in between contracts, but once you get the word out across your networks you should hopefully find opportunities coming your way.
I think the biggest and scariest step is the first one. Once you've done that, the rest is easy, in my experience. And if it works out as it should, you'll probably find yourself earning a lot more than you did when you were an employee, you'll be doing more varied work, and yes, you'll be able to work from home sans pants if that's what floats your boat.
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So because I went to see the very wonderful Michelle Shocked at Bar Bodega on Thursday night AND got her to sign a coupla CDs for me afterwards AND gave her a hug and thanked her for being a much-loved part of my life for the past 25 years, here she is singing Anchorage:
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*sigh* love those Okarito photos.
Okarito is my favourite place in the whole wide world - it's completely magical - I love it when you tell us snippets about life there, Islander.
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It’s funny, I’m usually the most voracious reader in my bookclub – I generally turn up with a great pile of ready-to-review novels each month – but since the Feb earthquake I haven’t read a single page. I’ve been doing logic puzzles and crosswords in bed instead.
We buy quite a few NZ novels at bookclub, but I think the last one I read was The 10pm Question which I lovedlovedloved. It’s one of the few books that every single bookclubber who’s read it has completely adored – which is very unusual, because we all have pretty varied tastes normally.
Apart from that, I absolutely devoured the Dragon Tattoo series when I was in the UK over Xmas (I had the third book saved up for the flight home, which consequently went by in a flash – yay!) and before that I was on a rather extended re-read of all my Terry Pratchetts. Maybe I should go back to those to ease myself into reading again (sorry not Kiwi but never mind).
Alternatively – and now I confess my guilty pleasure reading – I see that the final book in Jean Auel’s Earth’s Children / Clan of the Cave Bear series is out, so maybe I’ll get that instead. Hopefully it’ll be better than book 5 which was AWFUL and desperately in need of a very ruthless editor. Prehistoric sex and inventing stuff! Woohoo!
I think I can safely say that, like some others here, my reading requirements at the moment are to provide me with comfort and familiarity – like a glass of warm milk and a cookie at bedtime.
I’m definitely not looking to be challenged by my reading material right now, nor am I enthusiastic about reading anything that, as my friend Mary at bookclub puts it – has a “sense of impending doom”.
Maybe on that note I should go back to some of my beloved children’s books – perhaps The Borrowers or Swallows and Amazons or The Secret Garden. Sadly, again (apologies Jolisa) not Kiwi, but then I was a child in England, so there you go.
ETA: Speaking of The Little Stranger – same here – couldn’t get through it at.all. To be honest it frightened the pants off me with all the house-being-a-sentient-being thingy (or whatever it was) and I just couldn’t carry on with it. And I, too, thought The Night Watch was completely awesome. Bawled my eyes out at that one, I did.
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As a New-Zealander-who-was-born-somewhere-else (the UK), I have always found it very interesting how often people will ask me “so when was the last time you went home?” or “I heard you’re going home [meaning the UK] for Christmas”. My reply has always begun: “well, home is here – but…”.
It surprises me when ex-pats still refer to the country of their birth as “home” – even after they’ve lived here for decades. I made a conscious decision to become a Kiwi in every way possible when I emigrated here – there didn’t seem much point otherwise – and so I’ve called NZ “home” for the past 18+ years.
If I’m asked where I’m from, like most people, it depends on where I’m being asked, and by whom.
In the UK, the answer to that question is “New Zealand” and then a secondary answer might be “but I was born in the UK”. If it’s a question from a Kiwi in NZ, then I generally say Wellington, and then again I might clarify that by saying I was born in the UK but have lived here for nearly 20 years.
For almost the entire time I’ve lived here, I’ve always said I would never leave, and that I couldn’t imagine any possible reason why I would ever want to go back to live in the UK.
And then the ChCh earthquake happened, and suddenly everything was different.
I was suddenly completely terrified of living here – especially in Welli – and I felt as though at any second we’d get The Big One as well, and I just couldn’t handle the anxiety.
For the first time since I renounced my Englishness and became a Kiwi I didn’t want to be here. For the first time ever when I called my sister in the UK I said “I want to come home”. And for the first time ever the words “I hate it here and I don’t want to live here any more” passed my lips.
Well, that was a few weeks ago now.
Over the past month I have been learning how to be a staunch Kiwi in the face of Mother Nature, and re-assessing my initial panicked response. Plan A (go back and live in the UK) has morphed into Plan B (move up the coast but continue to work in Welli) and then plans C and D (variations on finding somewhere else to live in Welli that’s not on a slope – yeah good luck with that – and not so close to the fault line).
And I find that what has come out of all of this is a renewed love of my adopted country, a realisation that this really is where I want to stay, and quite a passionate re-appreciation of the wonders of NZ, and of Wellington in particular.
I look at the houses clinging precariously to slopes and hillsides, splendid in their wooden villa-ness or their modern architectural defiance of gravity, and I think to myself how much I love them, and how much I love this place, and how completely mental we all are to live somewhere where it could all fall down in a matter of seconds.
I realise how fragile and precious we all are, and how fragile and precious our way of life is, and the fragility and value of our crazy architecture – and I love it all even more than I did before The Day That Everything Changed.
I still have no idea how those of you who live in ChCh are brave or strong enough to choose to stay – I don’t think my newly learned staunch skills would be up to the task at all – but I have been able to remind myself that there are so many wonderful things about living in NZ, and living in Wellington, that it’s worth the risk to do so.
Ask me again if Welli gets another shake (hoping as always that it’s only a little one) and I might be a bit wobbly myself again, but I think I might be finally figuring out how to live happily in a country where the earth moves on a regular basis. For me, home is Wellington, New Zealand, and I appreciate and love it every day.
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Hard News: Kittens and puppies for happiness, in reply to 3410,
OMG are those really real? They're AWESOME!
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Following on from old-school YouTube cute videos, in addition to "otters holding hands" my all-time fave has to be "the sneezing baby panda" - tell me it doesn't make you laugh and I won't believe you...
...and put me down as another one who cried today when I re-watched the otters - the bit where they come back together again set me off too. And the baby corgi one made me cry as well for some reason.
I've been resolutely not watching any news at all since last Friday - I can't handle it at the moment, it makes me too anxious - and I've been tip-toeing around Public Address for a week trying to only read posts that don't freak me out - so thank you Russell for a thread that I can be pretty sure will be safe for me to read. :)
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I’m feeling exactly the same way as you, Hilary.
I’ve managed to get barely any work done this week – I can’t concentrate on anything at all, not even tidying the house or doing the garden. It’s all too much.
I’m becoming more and more frightened just living in Wellington, seeing the destruction in ChCh and imagining what it would be like in Welli. I mostly work at home, and I’ve been going round the house clearing space under desks and tables, mentally going through where I’d try and shelter, depending on which room I’m in, looking at large pieces of furniture and imagining where they might end up, planning to get a man in to fix them more securely to walls and fit all my cupboard doors with something that might keep them securely closed.
I’ve been into town twice since the earthquake, and everywhere I go I’ve found myself looking up uneasily at the massively tall buildings, mentally comparing them with the much lower buildings in the ChCh CBD, and picturing them crashing down, glass and rubble everywhere. Verandas over the pavements are now something I fear walking under (and you obviously can’t avoid them) and I’ve been wondering whether it would be better to run out from under them or run towards the building in the belief that they would come down at an angle… but having a pillar between you and the plate glass shop windows would obviously be helpful in one’s survival as well.
In offices when I go to visit clients my first thought is now to identify the nearest desk or whatever that I could retreat to, and on the bus I’ve been mentally rehearsing getting down on the floor if it all goes pear-shaped.
I have many friends in Christchurch, and once I had verified that they were all OK, my thoughts began to turn more and more to what it would be like if it happened here – not particularly helped by my obsessive watching of TV reports in the first couple of days – and ongoing obsession with reading endless news reports on-line.
I cannot imagine what it must be like for everyone in ChCh – unspeakable, I think. I don’t think I would be able to handle it – I think I would have headed for the hills by now, and I have enormous admiration for those who have stayed put – and I know that for some, there isn’t that freedom of choice in terms of leaving anyway.
And yeah, B Jones – I really don’t like it when the bus goes under the Bowen St motorway bridge or through any of the tunnels, either.
I know what I’m feeling is less than one millionth of what those in Christchurch are feeling, which is why I have also been reticent about mentioning it, but it is somewhat reassuring to see that I’m not the only one to feel this way, and to wonder how long it will take each of us in our own ways to return to some state of “normal”.
For those who lost loved ones, the answer is “never”. For those in ChCh, I guess it's going to take a considerable amount of time, if ever. For the rest of us, I don’t know.
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Up Front: Ups and Downs. And Side-to-Sides., in reply to BenWilson,
You could collect a bit of water with the dehumidifier first, boil it and then use that water to clean it with, and maybe you'd add a few drops of bleach the first time around. Then collect a bit more water, boil it and clean it again with dishwashing liquid or something.
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Random thought that's been running through my mind since the Sept earthquake...
If one had power back on, but no water supply, one could "make" water with one's dehumidifier (assuming one had one and it wasn't busted) - especially with the "laundry" setting that my one has - it collects a full tank in a few hours. If you boiled it just in case, would it be OK to drink? And even if you didn't want to risk drinking it, it would work for washing and cleaning up, wouldn't it?