10 Reasons Why I Love My Freelance Job

I work for a web startup in Silicon Valley on contract, about 40 hours per week.

10 Reasons I love My Job:

1) The people I work with are passionate, fun, and great collaborators working together to create something new.

2) My job tasks are diversified and include many things I'm interested in, such as writing, community management, UI, and QA.

3) The room to grow at my company is only limited by my skills and interests.

4) I get paid a very decent monthly wage for the opportunity to do something I love.

5) Because I'm on contract, I get the flexibility I need to pursue my other passion: theater directing in the evenings and on weekends. I've applied for numerous web startups, but most wanted me full time at 60+ hours a week. If I had no life outside of my job, I'd be happy to take this on. However, I need to have balance in my life. I don't mind sacrificing company-sponsored benefit plans, sick days, holidays and stock options if it means I can keep doing what I love AND have a job I love.

6) While I don't have a lot of time to do "other freelance projects," I have a few hours a week that I can move around to take on some extra work. I like to continue freelancing on additional projects because it's always good to have side income in case your full-time (or in my case, 40 hour per week freelance) gig goes kaput.

7) Free lunch on Mondays!

8) I feel appreciated. My ideas are not always used, but at least they're considered. People seem to respect me. That's the most important thing in making me feel satisfied at a job.

9) Flexible schedule and work location. I work from the office 2-3 days per week and I work from home the rest of the time. I find I actually do more work when I'm at home because I can focus. I'm also not anxious like I was at former jobs where I just didn't feel smart/competent/knowledgeable enough to feel comfortable yet still challenged in the position(s).

10) My job is a great stepping stone to whatever comes next. I'm learning so much, and I learn more every day. As a writer, I'm still involved in research and finding out new things. As a community manager, I get to do my favorite thing ever - help people. Is it so absolutely bizarre that I actually love responding to customer feedback and writing FAQs? Being involved in QA, I'm learning a lot about testing a site for bugs. In general as a marketing assistant and such, I'm learning a bit about product management and general marketing for a web startup. I think all of this puts me in a great spot to move on to bigger and better things later in life, whether that be a position with more responsibility at my current company or something else. A while back I applied to a community manager position at another startup and it came down to me and someone else. I didn't get the gig, probably because my journalism experience wouldn't directly cross over to interacting with site users on a daily basis. But now... my resume can potentially land me another community management job, if I ever need to look for another one down the line.