Anonymous asked:
Do you think you could ever get a house on a freelancer's "salary"?
I know plenty of people who have freelanced their way into owning a home. It depends a lot on where you live, how much you make, and how secure your incoming work stream is. If you live in New York City, buying a co-op or condo or a house in the outer boroughs is various levels of insanely expensive, so you’d better be doing pretty well. Los Angeles is the same. But if you’re a freelancer who lives in, say, Kentucky, it’s probably quite a bit easier to buy a place. Location counts when it comes to purchasing land and homes.
To get to the core of your question, I think the simple answer is yes: It’s definitely possible to make a large salary freelancing. You’re going to need great clients with appropriate amounts of money and spending habits. And you’re going to need to work a lot. Eventually, you’ll hit a maximum income that’s based on the physical reality that you’re only one person and you can only work so much. When that happens, you’ll hire people.
In just twelve short months:
Personally, professionally, and by just about every other metric, 2011 was the best year of my life. I can’t wait to see what 2012 has in store.
You can view all 264 photos I posted in 2011 on Flickr. For those of you who want even more photographic fun, subscribe on Facebook, where I post more (albeit less polished) photos of us and our adventures.
I was across the street working in World Financial Center 2 the morning of September 11, 2001. I heard the second plane hit, heard the explosion, and for a moment thought I was going to die. But I didn’t.
I walked out of the building alongside hundreds of others and looked across the street at two burning skyscrapers, amazed and horrified, confused and nervous. We watched as people leapt to their deaths to avoid burning and heard the sound of human bodies hitting concrete after falling 70 stories. We stood, unable to help, unsure what to do next. And then we fled the city. I was on a train in NJ when someone announced the first tower had fallen.
For the next month, I couldn’t sleep without nightmares. I became a news radio junkie. I developed troubling, severe anxiety. I wondered if I would ever feel comfortable on a plane or in a tall building again. I read countless stories about the day and couldn’t stop looking at photos that made me sob. I spent several months unemployed, sitting at home in front of my computer all day, truly depressed for the first time in my life. Everything felt broken and wrong and terrifying. I wasn’t sure how to get back to my normal life.
Little things helped. Spending time with friends, finding a crummy job that gave me somewhere to go every day, something to do with myself. Family. Eventually, I began to heal. I moved to Brooklyn. I passed the WTC site every time I went to see a movie at my favorite theater. I rode the subway without constant fear of terrorism. I flew more and more to various cities in the US, first with the help of large doses of Xanax and then more and more without it. I began to feel comfortable in the world again. I fell even more in love with the city I had always dreamed of living in.
I spent the majority of this past decade living in New York City. The same city I fled that morning, the same city I came back to a few months later, worried but defiant. The city I truly grew up in, for better or worse. I’ve moved away now, but New York City will always be my home.
LA-Bound
Yesterday was our five month wedding anniversary and today we begin our cross-country drive to our new home in Los Angeles. Our stuff is packed and on its way out, our cats are prepared for their fancy pet airlines flight, and our car is filled to the gills with our most important stuff. Tonight, we head to Lexington, Kentucky. Then Memphis, TN, Oklahoma City, OK, Albuquerque, NM and Phoenix, AZ before arriving in Los Angeles next week.
It feels like we’ve been building up to this moment for forever. The anticipation is overwhelming and we’re excited to finally start the trip. California, here we come.
Huge Success
We found an apartment on our second day in Los Angeles. And it would have been the first day, except the real estate agent had the wrong keys. So excited to have found a great place, now we just need to actually move.
Our Home: A Venn Diagram
I drew a version of this chart on a little board in our apartment just after we got married and it has been in the back of mind since. This is a pretty perfect diagram of home life, except off to the right would be this circle that’s about 100x as large as the others labeled “Upcoming Move to LA” and it’s slowly moving in to destroy us all.
(30 Seconds to Mars pictured above. Please ignore “Seconds to Mars” and just focus on the 30. I couldn’t really find a good image to denote this age, so this is the best I’ve got. Also, try not to look directly into Jared Leto’s eyes, as it’s possible this will lead to some sort of possession and/or vampirism.)
Today I turned 30.
I’ve been welcomed into that warm, soggy area of life just after your exciting twenties but before your anxiety-ridden 40s with open arms by my friends and wife, all of whom are older than me. They’ll all hit 50 first, which makes me feel a lot better.
I’m not upset about hitting my fourth decade. In fact, the opposite is true: Business is going remarkably well, I’m recently married and we’re about to embark on a journey across the country into completely new territory both personally and professionally. I genuinely feel that momentum is building in my life, and I’m very excited to see where it takes me.
Goodbye, 20s Garrett. You were an often-confused, headstrong young chap who made some bad decisions, some terrific decisions, and for the most part you had a pretty damned successful 10 years. Thanks for pulling through and getting us to 2011. We’ll take it from here.
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