I have been a professional freelancer for about five or six years. It came about slowly while I had babies and needed to be at home with them. When I got my novels published, and had some short stories accepted for anthologies, it gave me the confidence to pursue a freelance writing career. My challenge has been finding the right people and the right companies to pitch work to. I found my way into blog writing and managed to get by with sponsored blog posts and product reviews for a while. My work has generally been quite sporadic. I will have weeks of very little income while I try and find writing jobs. Then I will have weeks where I feel overwhelmed with the responsibility. And around all of this I am juggling childcare and family life.

Work from home jobs for mums are not as glamorous or as lucrative as we are led to believe. For example, even though I earn money as a freelancer, I am still way below the threshold where I am considered important enough to register with the government so I can pay tax. Now, that might seem like a good thing, but it means I might not get a very good state pension when I am older, if such a thing still exists by then. I do not earn enough money to support my family: that task falls to my husband. And then I fall into the classic trap where I feel a bit blasé about working. I find myself easily distracted by household tasks, the need to run errands and be sociable. I find it difficult to assert when I need to be on the laptop actually working. And it is my own fault. I need to knuckle down, get tough on myself, and take my career in freelancing seriously. Nobody else is going to do it for me. Let’s see how that works out when I have the children home for summer holidays and my husband working away from home… wish me luck!

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