Well – I’ve finally cut ties with Elance. I got kind of tired of paying monthly for something that was an afterthought and really not bringing in any sincere income. It’s not that it isn’t a good service, and there is certainly a place for it – but at this point in my career, I feel like my energies are best spent elsewhere.

Elance is a good place to find work, if you’re willing to work über-cheap. Being an American with 4 children and a wife to support, I can’t afford to give away logo design for $25 a pop. I’m a huge believer in ‘you get what you pay for’, and I think that Elance kind of bore that out. I would bid, get rejected, and have to move on to the next thing. And usually, the folks would go with the guy that has 45,000 “gigs” landed, and he’s made just slightly over $30,000 for those finished gigs. His stuff would be clipart, bad fonts, and strange effects.

That’s just not what I’m about, and I would wager that’s really just not what most freelance designers are about. Or, at least, not what they …

I’m a freelance graphic artist, and so many times, I find myself falling back into being freelance graphic production, or something else I don’t wanna be…

Now – that certainly beats the pants off being a freelance ditch digger or a full-time burger flipper. But damn it – that’s not why I started this gig. I wanted to spend my days doing things that don’t suck.

I’ve taken hiatuses before – from work, from t.v., from personal grooming – but this week, I’m taking a hiatus from doing work that sucks and that goes against what I want to do with my time. I’m worth more than that, and you are too.

I’m not saying that I’m the second coming of the design messiah – what I’m saying is that my time is better spent actually advancing my art and my career. I’ve done enough boring design work, enough production-level stuff in my life  and I’m purposing myself to find more interesting, more fulfilling, more important work to fill my week.

If we all had our druthers, we’d be working on high design every moment of every business day. No more “Yeah, I can do …

Usually, I try to keep things platform independent (even though Macs are obviously superior in every way,) and if I mention software, I attempt to keep it neutral.

But – I’ve found an app that is so handy and simple and FREE, I just had to share.

I’ve always been one of those guys that just sort of ballparks time when billing or quoting, and old habits die hard. But, after my 4-hour-a-day epiphany, I decided I’d go for a few weeks and really track the amount of time I spend on projects. Do logos REALLY take me 8 hours? Does a Wordpress website take 5? I had guesstimates, but that’s not going to cut it when you try to track every minute of the day.

Enter iClockr from Kedisoft. (and no, I’m not getting any kickbacks!)

It’s a free piece of software, and it’s quickly become indispensable to me.

Using iClockr is über-simple. You set up categories of work (design, communications, blogging, wasting time, etc) and then go in and add individual jobs or clients under those categories. Once that’s done, you’re ready to really start tracking your time. When you start working on a …

My wife and I sat down a while back and added up our bills, dreams and goals for our family – from a financial standpoint. We added up the figures, including EVERYTHING that goes out monthly – hosting expenses, gym fees, the kid’s classes, insurance, gasoline, coffee, shoes, etc – and came up with a total amount that I must grab monthly. Then, we tacked on what we’d like to have for savings and extra money. Then, we took that total, divided it by 20 days (the work days in every month), then divided that by my hourly rate.

The cool thing – I only need 4 hours a day to live comfortably, put money in the bank, and have extra each and every month.

4 hours.

240 minutes.

Listening to Dark Side of the Moon 5.1 times.

Watching Spinal Tap twice.

Not bad, huh?

The uncool thing – I need 4 hours a day that I can bill.

Doesn’t sound like much, but I’ve found it kind of difficult to truly bill out 4 hours a day at my full rate. I won’t tell you what I charge per hour, but I can tell …

I’ve never been one to be totally truthful. I veil the majority of what I do in a little bit of secrecy. Smoke and mirrors, man behind the curtain – all that crap.

Very few people know who I really am (I can count them all on one hand) and I prefer it that way. I’m guarded and I feel out-of-place in crowds. Heck, I feel out of place in small groups of my friends.

So, over the years, I’ve built this online persona to keep myself comfortable in the business, art and professional world. I suspect a lot of you have. Mine is “Independent Studios.” I portray a corporate place. A studio where people work. I’ve done a lot of work (most of it for very little money,) and I’ve done it under a thin anonymity. And honestly, it’s attracted a clientele and work load that I’m not precisely comfortable with.

I’ve done a good job of keeping my client base small, working with a bunch of really nice people and decent organizations – but I’ve done it at the cost of doing what I really love to do – which is draw and …

My grandfather (Grandaddy) passed away last Tuesday. He was 90 years old and sharp as a tack up until the day he wandered off to go home. I admired him for a number of reasons – he was in a tank under Patton in World War 2, he was a strong man who raised a passel of good kids that turned into great people, he was a musician, he liked to cook beans and cabbage, and he liked to tell stories and laugh and carry on.

But I think the thing that sticks with me more than anything, and the thing I admired the most was that he was thankful. Always thankful.

He didn’t have money – he retired from being a mill worker.

He didn’t have a lot of possessions. He lived with family for the better part of the last 15 years. He had photos and memories and little things. But not much.

He knew that what he had was much better than being rich or being famous. He had a family that cared for and loved him. He had his faith (I won’t get into that here, but that was the most important thing to …

I’ve got a problem.

I am constantly inspired.

I’m inspired from a great number of sources. Truth be told, my sources for inspiration are so diverse, and my pool of inspirations is so large, I could blog about nothing BUT inspiration and never run out of topics.

Nature, my kids, movies, paintings, books, magazines, conversations, dreams, depression, punk music, phone calls, pop culture, yadda yadda yadda…

While that inspiration is great (and crucial,) that inspiration can be fruitless, because I have a problem with motivation. Well – that, and there’s just not enough hours in the day to fully flesh out my ideas and inspiration.

Motivation is crucial in any field, but especially in the Freelance World (capitalized for effect.)

Without motivation, you get nothing done. All the best designs in the world, all the best thoughts and ideas are worthless without the desire to get them “on paper.” Without motivation, you can starve, go homeless, upset clients, make a bad name for yourself, etc…

So what do you do to get motivated?

Good question – and one that’s largely impossible to answer. Motivation, like inspiration, is so individual that it is hard to paint solutions with a large brush.

What do I do …

I’m a father of 3, a husband of 1, master to one German Shepherd and servant to one cat. I run a business, tend a garden and I generally cook dinner 7 nights a week. I like to hike, I like to draw and I like to spend time drinking coffee on my deck, watching the world go by. I like to noodle on my guitars. I like to read magazines and books about sociology and World War 2. I lose track of all that from time to time.

We’ve got several computers (4, at last count) and many televisions (3, I think) a whole gang of cell phones, video games and electronic doo-dads. DVDs and little televisions for the minivan. iPods, headsets, Skype, Facebook, IM, blogs, radios, CD players, on and on and on…

Sometimes, I’ll find that the house is very quiet. I’m pecking away at a project, my wife is blogging, my son is texting, my other son is watching t.v., my daughter is listening to music and dancing around, waiting for her turn at the t.v. We’re all plugged in. We’re all in the same general vicinity, …

Well, Charter Communications comes through again…

Just when I am humming along, having a nice life and getting a lot done, Charter decides that it’s in my best interest to hose my internet connection and make things – um – interesting.

May 12, they told me. Just 8 days away! Sweet! I can take some time off, tend the garden a little, catch up on my reading and sleeping, hang out with the kids and wife – you know, all the little things I don’t get to do as much as I’d like.

Nevermind that I had deadlines, people depending on me and blog posts to write. Nevermind that I need to make money. I should just RELAX.

It came back on, no thanks to Charter. At least it came back on. While I was sitting in a café, feverishly typing away on an Ipod touch, it occurred to me – I need a better backup plan.

I’m not a laptop guy. I’m a desktop guy. I like to get in and swap out drives and blow out dust and add RAM and play around with the guts of my machine. I also like lots of big …

I’ve gone on and on about why I’m a freelancer. The freedom, the creativity, the hunt, the kill, the good coffee, the ability to avoid razors for weeks on end, the shoes-optional office, etc. But – at the bottom of it all, I’m a freelancer because it’s the best way to serve my family, see them often and have the freedom to hang out around the house and pester everyone. The flexibility helps the family run smoothly.

So – I have come to rely on the way my family runs. We’ve got a bit of a double-whammy in that we also homeschool. 3 kids. We homeschool 3 kids. THREE. We have three kids that we are responsible for teaching. Every day. 3. THREE. III. (Sorry – I just had to say it a bunch of times, just to be able to wrap my brain around it. That, and for comedic effect.) And admittedly, my wife takes responsibility for 99.9% of all of it. And she keeps the house clean and the kids, well – somewhat clean. She’s awesome. And – she does it for FREE.

Sunday night, she started feeling horribly ill. Fever, …