Day in the Life of a Freelance Editor / Writer: Round Two!

I have now been a full-time freelance editor and writer for almost three whole months! The time certainly does fly. I have learned a lot in the past few months about being a small business owner, working from home, my own work style, and the freelancing lifestyle in general. So I figured it was about time that I write another blog post detailing “a day in the life of.”

This is a pretty typically day for me, apart for the evening: I start my day with a bit of exercise and social media, and then I usually work on projects for one to two clients with a nice break in the middle of the day. I generally spend the late afternoon / evening doing admin type of work for my business or continuing to work on projects from earlier in the day. It works pretty well for me! Today was just a little bit of an anomaly in the evening – normally I work for another two to four hours after dinner. But that’s the beauty of the freelance life: if something comes up one day, you work more the next. Hurray for flexibility!

Here’s what my Tuesday, June 17, 2014 looked like:

7am Crawl out of bed. I caught a cold in Toronto last week and although I’m pretty much 100% better, I still have an annoying cough that wakes me up in the wee hours of the morning. My alarm was set for 6:30am, but I first woke up around 4:30am and was drifting in and out of sleep before finally getting out of bed at 7am. Luckily my workspace is just a few steps away 😉

7:10am Settle into a 30-minute gentle hatha yoga from YogaDownload.com with Mr Science. We took 10 days off from running and yoga while we were in Ontario, so I could really feel the thigh burn from this usually-gentle workout! It certainly helped to wake me up, however.

7:50am Get dressed and pour myself some coffee.

8am Eat breakfast: Nature’s Path Sunrise Crunchy Vanilla cereal. It is ridiculously delicious. I eat breakfast and drink my coffee in front of my computer, as per usual. The first hour of my day is pretty much always spent checking and responding to emails, and checking and updating social media (Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook) where necessary. I keep my computer on my standing desk for most of the day – I find that standing up while I’m working often keeps me more energized.

9am Consult my tasks for the day and organize myself.

9:15am Write a blog post – I’ve been commissioned to write a product review for the excellent company U-RAAW!, so I got that blog post written and scheduled to publish later in the week.

10am Phone meeting time, arranging for more blog partnerships—this one, as a blog ambassador for GoodLife Fitness.

10:15am Make a cup of tea and work on an editing project for a client.

11:15am Snack break! Some banana with peanut butter to keep me fueled up.

11:30am Continue with editing project. I started out at my sitting desk this time and moved back to the standing desk after the first hour. I generally go back and forth between the two throughout the day depending on my energy levels.

1:30pm Time for a break! Took a little walk, did some cleaning and tidying around the house, and and got away from the computer in general for a while. Mr Science came home so I chatted with him a little while he started getting dinner ready.

2:30pm Social media management for a client – mostly working on the back end of the blog and writing a blog post.

4pm Dinner time!

4:30pm Admin work for my business.

5pm More blog management, this time for a group I’m volunteering with.

5:30pm Cat-sitting time! The mother dear is out of the country, so Mr Science and I are in charge of taking care of her cat. It was a nice reason to get out of the house and go for a bike ride, too.

7pm A little walk and some spontaneous patio-sitting.

8:30pm Netflix time. The evening went by very quickly!

10:30pm Get ready for tomorrow and head to bed.