Its Like Thunder...Lightening...

being a freelancer can be frightening....you have to knock, knock, knock on wood...

and cross your fingers, and say your prayers, and offer sacrifices to the IT gods, and, well, you get my point.

So, you think you know what fear is, do you? Really? Do you?

After last night, I not only know what it sounds like, I know what it smells like and it smells like..sniff sniff...like...sniff sniff...BURNING ELECTRONICS!

Around 5pm last night a thunderstorm rolled in. Not one to take a chance with said storm, I shut down early, but still decided to work. Paper work, book research, that kind of thing because you see, a Freelancer's work is really never done.

About 30 minutes after shutdown, the storm was pretty rocking, when all of a sudden I saw a sudden burst of light that was so intense that all I could think of was the flash that appears before a nuclear bomb goes off. This flash was followed by a loud explosion..which just so happened to be a transformer in my office absorbing all the lightening-goodness into itself, then exploding into little balls of melted plastic. I guess with the intention to share all this goodness with me and my office mates.

As if the explosion and hail of molten plastic wasn't enough fun, the alarm, CO2 detector and fire alarm now decided to join in the cacophony of joyous sounds filing my office. While I am trying to calm my office mates down (for those of you wondering, their names are Bela and Dozer..hard workers they are!) I smell the lovely scent of electronics on fire...in my office.

Ahhhh...bask in the feeling of panic...let it envelope you...let it run from your toes to your fingers....grip you chest in an unrelenting feeling of utter hopelessness and knot your stomach up to the point where you don't think you will ever stand up straight again!

The first thought that ran through my mind was what got hit? That was followed by, how much is it going to cost to fix it, how long will I be down and what did I lose in the process?????????????????? Not something that you want to contemplate at 6 in the evening when you are looking at a fast approaching deadline for a client.

When it comes right down to it, I am an army of one. Yes, I can call on others to give me hand here and there with things like IT work (Hi Todd!) And I have a great network of designers to turn too for help and manpower, but last night it was me and me alone. This is the moment that all freelancers must prepare for...yet, I don't think many even take into consideration.

Freelance isn't all pj's and flexible hours. In the last week I have had to pay for my second quarter taxes, my health insurance, my lawyer fees and misc office expenses. And after that I still have to figure out how to put aside some money for retirement..or emergencies. Plus on top of all that, freelancers still have to find clients, and keep existing ones happy, keep on top of trends and find ways to stand out from the sea of computer users who think they are designers just because they were able to bittorrent photoshop and own a font other than Helvetica.

I'm not saying I don't enjoy what I do or that I'm not learning a lot by being an army of one. That isn't my intention here. I want my freelance friends to learn by what happened to me to be prepared and I want my non-freelancer friends to understand that just because I sit in my own office with my "office mates" doesn't mean that my day isn't any less harder than yours. And I want my clients to learn that your work is important to me and because of that, I try my hardest to provide you with the attention that your job deserves. And even when I am out of sight out of mind, I am still working on ways to make sure that nothing gets in the way of the service I provide.

So, what is the outcome of the whole thunderstorm you say??? Well, because I invested the funds in a very nice UPS backup and an external drive that backs up and then gets disconnected from the computer, my machines seem to be safe!

Grant it, I'm sure I could have a better system than I do, but with the funds I had available to me, I think it did just fine last night.

I lost a TV, my office phone and answering machine, my modem, my alarm panel and my electric fence. All in all not bad when you compare it to the time, money and aggravation it could have been.

Can't you just hear the Godsmack music playing in the background?