I love being self employed. It’s always been my dream. Mind you, I wasn’t expecting to be doing it at this particular time in my life. But when I got the unexpected lay-off notice back in January, it kind of forced my hand.
I haven’t looked back since. I’m making my living doing voice-over and I’m my own boss.
Beauty.
Here’s the thing I’ve found about working for yourself. It’s easy to not set parameters. What I mean by that is, when you have a regular job, you have hours. You work inside of those hours and outside of those hours (hopefully) you enjoy time to yourself.
Working for myself as a Male Voice Talent, I find that it’s really easy to work all the time. Literally. I’ll spend hours at the computer or on my iPad looking for auditions, submitting auditions, recording voice-overs, blogging, reading, learning, etc… etc… etc. Sometimes I look up and it’s 2:30a in the morning and I have to remind myself to go to bed!
I work hard all the time because I want to be the best at what I do.
The problem is, sometimes I forget to take a day off. We all need to take a day off.
If I were to ask you about your day off what would it look like? Do you still check your email? Answer your cell? Do you run for the studio when a great audition opportunity comes in? Do you leave the office? The house? Your neighbourhood?
Every so often I think it’s important to take a day off. A real day off. A full-blown, honest to goodness day off. That’s what I’m doing today.
If you need me today, you won’t be able to reach me. I’ll be heading across the border for a day out of the country. I find that if I’m out of the country it’s the easiest way for me to not work. I’m too cheap to use my cell in the U.S and my recording gear is too far away. 🙂
When is the last time you took a real day off?
