This is a follow up post to the one I made last spring, located here

I am not going to go into much recap for where I was at seven months ago. If you want to see details, please go read the post. In short, I was let go by the company I worked for since September, and dove head-first into freelance full time.

It has now been a bit more than half a year since I started swimming around the freelance pool, and I have to say that it is the best thing I could have done at the time. Since then, I have kept my eye open for possible positions with local companies, and even got to go through the interview process with at least one of them, but none came to to fruition. By late summer 2011, I had come to realize and decide that sticking to freelancing is going to be my best option and what’s best for me at this point in my life.

I have been very fortunate during 2011. I feel that I have managed to keep earning a living in web development by finding a handful of people that can benefit from having me be a part of their projects. They have always been the project managers of the work, and I’ve been hired for the developer side of things. This is from a mixture of both local and remote people, which is something I really appreciate. I like that I have been brought up numerous times by local businesses as someone who is both capable and able to do the needed work, and appreciate that they are willing to help me out. I can definitely understand that they can’t afford or don’t choose to hire a person for an in-house position, the steady work to justify just may not be there. Both the company and I benefit through contract work for the projects they do have. It allows me to rub elbows with them and the people involved, as well as help me earn my living, and they get the project done(and done well), and know that they can count on me for possible future work. Lasting relationships are being formed. It’s also personal hope that if some of these companies get to a point where they are looking to grow and can justify bringing in a new web developer to the mix, they can ask me if I would like to have the position, because they know first hand how I work and the quality I produce.

When it comes to the remote contacts, I feel that I am in a sweet spot. Some of them are people who dislike or struggle with CSS and getting the website to be like designed, but are perfectly capable of the actual design process. Others have definitely been capable of all the work I am hired for, but have so much going on that they contract people to do the work so they can focus on other parts of the overall project. With the help of these people, I have gotten the chance to work with people from California all the way to Ireland, on a wide variety of site topics. These topics include personal portfolio redesign, daily deals to save money, and even a karaoke band, among many others.

However, I can not claim web development as my only job. In late August, I also got myself a part time job in town helping a local grocery store, filling in for 10-15 hours a week. For me, the reasons are justifiable, as it gets me out of the house for a bit each shift, and gets me moving around and active, as well as providing a little bit of extra spending money. Who could argue against that?

In the end, I have gotten to work with people from a lot of different areas on a lot of different topics, doing what I love and enjoy, which is aiding in making stuff for the internet, and I don’t plan to stop. Once again, what can I help you with?