I hate January. For me, it's the slowest month of the year with February.
Each year, I spend both months waiting for orders in a growing panic, questioning my career choices and my future as a freelancer and an entrepreneur.
So far, with the exception of two or three really bad years (Hello, 2020), I've always managed to make up in the ten other months for the money I don't manage to make in the two first ones.
Yet, this year it's different. Something's changed in me. I must confess I'm a bit disheartened at the idea of two months of anguish and spare projects, in a climate of soaring prices and unmanageable energy bills on a single salary.
Come January each year, I update my CV and my profiles, I apply to new agencies and send my existing clients a friendly reminder that I exist.
Over the last three years, I've also created my website Tip of the Tongue in French and English, as well as a personal blog, Presque Parfaite, where I write about my life as a single mom, a solopreneur and a woman in search for meaning in a meaningless world.
I trained as a certified translator and a coach, and I've started training in neurolinguistic programming and taken up Dutch and Italian again.
Each year, I use these two slowest months to explore copywriting, SEO, literary translation, on-line marketing, as well as alternate career opportunities in project management, in-house translation, language teaching or even institutional postings and official contest procedures.
So far, all this has served as stepstones in my career as a solopreneur, helping me find new clients and adding to my skills.
But this year, after 15 years of working as a solo mercenary, using my flexible hours and freedom from bosses and hierarchies to raise my children on my own and live my everyday life as I please without reporting to anyone but myself, I'm starting to come to the point where I'm tired of the endless hustling, prospecting and worrying about paying my mortgage and bills and feeding my kids.
Will it be a year of great change for me?
Only time will tell, but it should be settled within the following months.
Meanwhile, it would be great if my Inbox could fill fast with new requests for translation and copywriting projects, big and small.