Freedom is “the power or right to speak, think and act as one wants”. How is that related to working as a freelance?
I spent the first 2 years of my working life working as employee in very boring and exhausting jobs… I was forced to go to work from 9 to 5, to follow orders, receive a paycheck that barely payed my expenses and got my famous 1 months holidays per year. But I never took it as an example of how my future would need to look like. In fact I learned the basics on how the employee lifestyle looks like and motivated me to get out of these loop asap.
If you look at the definition of freedom and the three main elements, I wasn’t free at all. I didn’t have the the power to speak as I wanted, when I complained about things not being fair or things to improve I was asked to shut up and follow orders… I was free to think, because that occurred in my own brain, that is true, but I didn’t have the power to act as I wanted, I basically had to act based on the “procedure”, on a fix guideline, I wasn’t free to change things when they could be improved or be creative, I was hired for a job.
Actually, I was always free to choose, but I didn’t know it at that time.
The freelance way
It is true that freedom in the work life is kind of an utopia. You are always working for someone, which has some expectations, being your employeer or your customer. But freelancing allows you to decide who you work with, what you do, how you do it, what are the conditions in which you want to work. You basically have way more freedom than an employee.
They hire you as a freelance because you have some expertise which they need, they don’t know how to do something, so they ask you how, and you have you guide them, you are free to decide how to work. In fact many countries implement laws to guarantee that the customers keep you free in the way you deliver your work, they can decide what they want, but not how you are going to deliver what they want.
Furthermore, being a freelance allow you to work with different customers during the year, this means that you are not dependant on a single organization or person for your income, this makes you more free because you have more choices to choose.