Becoming a freelancer can become quite a monotonous life specially if you happen to be loaded with work. And this monotony is quite hard at the transition period. And especially hard if your time also happen to be fully booked.
I am lucky that my transition to freelancing has been quite successful that I managed to find work which fully booked my time. But it also meant that I was glued to the computer all by myself most of the time without much social / professional interactions. As all my clients are overseas and my interaction with them has been limited to emails/IM’s and at best, VOIP over Skype.
Sometimes I feel as if I’m on an extended vacation. Since I am living on the out skirts of Colombo and most of my friends are working in the city, it is very impractical for me to go out to meet them as that will require me sacrificing a good part of my afternoon in travelling for the occasion. Such meet-ups are also restricted by one of my assignments as I am required to be online in the evenings for a couple of hours for meetings.
So what is it that I can do to keep my social aspect in vogue while I build my freelance career?
Luckily in Sri Lanka we keep in touch with our extended families and they are quite involved in our lives. Therefore we interact with our parents, brothers and sisters and cousins very often. And our families have some function or other that brings the families together quite often. This certainly helps.
But this is hardly any professional networking as most of my extended family are in fields other than IT. Therefore, I feel the need to get involved in industry associations. One of the easiest and the best options for me are the .NET User Group in Sri Lanka. These guys arrange a meet-up once a month with a discussion on a up and coming technology topic. This participation will help me update my knowledge as well as to network. This network will also directly help me in identifying potential technical resources that I can collaborate on future projects while I build my network of collaborators.
Other than that I am not aware of many industry associations that I would like to participate in. Most of them are business chambers which at this point of time seem like an overkill for my time investment. If anyone knows of any associations or industry groups that I can be a part of, I would certainly like to hear.
Also, social life should not be limited to professional networking. Therefore I am going to make a concentrated effort to keep in touch with my friends and past colleagues, whose company I enjoyed. Also, I am thinking about investing time in an activity that I would enjoy, or a hobby. Preferably some sports/fitness activity or a social activity such as dancing. I am keen on a sport activity as being a freelancer gives me very little physical exercise while working from home and I badly need to shed some extra pounds.
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