I love my work

Have I mentioned lately how much I love what I do for a living? I have to give my husband a lot of credit for not saying anything when I announced to him that this is what I wanted to do – freelance full-time. Whether he had reservations, he never said. He knows that I can do a good job, but doing a good job and translating it to a full-time income isn’t always the same thing. I’ll always be grateful for his support.

Over the past two weeks, I’ve worked on so many different things that I can’t get bored; I don’t have time! Right now, I’m writing some patient education material (my favourite work), procedure summaries, wellness messages, nursing articles and article/study summaries. I’m editing a CME newsletter and gathering together information for an up-and-coming website. And that’s just the main stuff. I have a few other things in the works as well and I’m really enjoying it.

It’s funny because I have worked from home since the late 1990s, but I was never as happy and relaxed as now. I’ve always said that I’m not organized enough to do this because it’s more than just writing. You have to market yourself, you have to keep track of your clients, you have to keep track of your projects, and you have to make sure you invoice your clients and get paid. Oh, and then there’s the taxes and expenses, and everything else. When I was freelancing on the side, I was right – I wasn’t organized to do a good job keeping things straight. While I kept my clients straight and the work, I was awful at keeping my records straight. But now that I’m doing it full time, I’m as organized as can be. Everything is being logged in the right places and paper work is done on time as it should be. I barely recognize myself. Now, if I could figure out how to organize my office so it doesn’t look like a tornado hit it.

Making the jump to full-time freelancing is scary. There’s so much of “what if” that it can start playing games with your mind. What if you can’t find the clients? What if the clients aren’t happy? What if you can’t deliver? And on and on. Of course, there’s also the other worries like, what if you get sick and can’t work? What if…..?

But, if the what ifs start to get too overwhelming, it’s time—I think—to ask, what if I get too much work? What if I have to start turning down work? What if I can’t take a vacation? Wouldn’t those what ifs be so much more fun to ask?

I’m determined to make this work. I would really like to spread out though. Although the medical and health writing is interesting and can be fun, I would love to be able to write more general things. I’ve started querying some magazines with some ideas I have. It probably won’t be easy being able to switch mindsets sometimes, but it will be worth it. I’m sure of it.

Today’s News:
Calgary Health Region issues TB alert
Caught sleeping on the job? No worries
Antipsychotics increase death risk among seniors

And so I've joined the blogging world

Hi, I hope you enjoy reading my blog. I’ll be using it mostly for health and safety issues that have come up in the news. I’ll write a bit about myself and how I took the path to being a freelance writer, and how being a nurse made it all happen.

I have three children, two teens and one is 20 years old. All their lives, I’ve been telling them that what they decide to study, the path they choose to follow, does not mean that they’ll be doing that for the rest of their life.

So much pressure is placed on our kids today. They have to do well in school – of course as parents, we want that – but they also are supposed to decide at an early age what it is they want to do with their lives, for the rest of their lives.

Our world has changed so much that it’s not so easy to decide at 18 what you want to do for the next 40 plus years. There are jobs now that didn’t exist when we were in high school, and jobs that exist now may not exist 20 years from now.

I began studying nursing when I was 17 years old. I have always loved to write and I was good at it too. But, writing wasn’t considered a path to follow unless you wanted to be a journalist or something like that. So, after pondering my choices, I chose nursing. I chose it because I knew that I would always be able to find some sort of work, anywhere. So, that’s what I did.

I studied, graduated, worked, got married, had kids, but I always had this creativity in me that wasn’t coming out. When my youngest was a preschooler, I found a tiny ad in the Montreal Gazette. It said that they were searching for a nurse with Internet experience and who was a good communicator. Sounded like the perfect job for me. And it was. I began working, from home, for a health Internet site that no longer exists. For almost two years, I worked remotely and did some writing as part of my work. After I left that job, I ended up working for another medical website for several years. I freelanced on the side, my favourite work was writing patient education stuff.

In the meantime, I was still keeping my hand in nursing, but my passion was writing. Finally, last October, I took the plunge and began freelancing full-time. I now write and edit medical and health information and I love it. If I hadn’t studied nursing all those years ago, I would not be doing what I’m doing now.

I would like to spread out, write about other things as well. But, at least with my medical writing, I get to do what it is I really like to do. I got to be home with my kids as they grew up, I got to work full-time, and I got to be part of the new frontier, the Internet.

So, that’s who I am and how I became to be a health writer. I hope you’ll come back and visit; I think this will be fun.