"Day Jobs" and Tempting the Gods

As a freelance graphic designer, it's always been a roller coaster ride when it comes to finding work.

There have been some really dry stretches and during those times I'll usually pick up a day job for a year and change. It is great to build up the resume (just in case), not to mention helps with the immune system and is nice to make new friends and learn new skills that otherwise wouldn't be in your area of interest.

Nowadays, things have been pretty steady due to a strong major client and a good supporting cast of small businesses that have minor updates here and there. I've been out of a 'day job' for about 5 or 6 years now, and I don't anticipate ever going back, but you never know.

For instance, this year my wife and I finally purchased a home, left the rental market behind, but it took a huge chunk out of savings. And I've been eyeballing that moat for a couple months now, watching as things dwindle in real cash and rise in credit owed... it can get scary, ask any small business owner.

What do you do? Well, first thing you do is LOOK FOR WORK. Duh. LinkedIn, Craigslist (yuck), even maybe Elance, land of the 'logo contest'. These are all places you can find work, in addition to asking friends and acquaintances.

There is another thing I do, too. And it is much more fun than any of those other options.

It's quite simple, actually. I find a project I would love nothing more than to have a lot of free time to work on, and begin it in earnest. I do dedicate some time for outright searching of online job classifieds, but in my heart I KNOW I'm working on The Project.

And, then, suddenly, disappointingly even: Work falls in my lap.

I call this 'Tempting the Gods'. DARE the powers that be to interrupt your Most Important Project. I've found that more often than not, they don't disappoint in trying to disappoint me by tying me up in paid work.

And so it has happened again. I will continue to work on my Most Important Project, but those durned Cloud People in the Sky have thwarted me again for the most part, leaving me only a couple hours a day to work on my own personal projects. The nerve!

So next time you are looking for work... sweating bullets because nothing's coming up... watching the budget dwindle or even disappear... Well, yeah, continue to look for work. (It's no good if you're on the street!). But make a project that you'd LOVE to have more time to work on. A personal project, unpaid. Do what you can to make the time to make it happen.

And then, maybe, just maybe, perhaps more often than you expect, someone or something will come along to interrupt that work with money.