I don’t know why it’s called cat grass – Eva’s the only one who eats it.

Awful, awful day today. I have a feeling I’m standing on the edge of learning a really expensive lesson. If I do learn it, I will be passing on my findings to every single person I meet. I may even get t-shirts made to spread the word.

What you’re looking at is, basically, my company. Quite shocking that if the table caught fire whilst I was taking this photo, I’d be utterly screwed!

I pride myself on organisation. I like to travel /very/ light, and I like to use as little space/resource as possible with everything I do. I think that goes part of the way to making me great at what I do. I love that, if the need/mood takes me, I can stuff this into a bag and my company can go with me – I don’t show up at meetings having forgotten things, I don’t have people print things for me. Everything’s there (backed up threefold, I might add!).

I love this way of organising things, and it was what I looked forward to most about going freelance. I mean, sure, there are things that need to be paper. I have a box file for all my official company documents and a folder for receipts/bank stuff, but other than that I’m totally paperless. It has always been a pet hate of mine, companies that call themselves paperless, but joke about having paper everywhere!

Luckily, this week has been a stark contrast to last week – can you tell?!

The main issue I’ve really had was deciding whether I wanted to be a limited company or a sole trader. There are benefits to both – on the sole trader hand, you have less admin, less legal and financial hoops to jump through (IR35, anyone!?) and it’s generally a brief bit of contact with the IR and you’re off. On the limited hand, you have better tax breaks and limited liability (this turns out to be more important than I’d first thought) in a nutshell.

Ultimately, I decided (after being so close to going sole trader) that I wanted to be a limited company, and I’ll tell you why. The *only* thing (initially) stopping me from being a limited company was the paperwork. Tax and the law scares me, and I wanted to be as free from it as possible.

It turns out, there are these guys called accountants and they do so much more than I thought they did. If you give them some money, they’ll set up your company for you so that you’re totally ready to go. You then go to the bank and open a bank account for your company, get some insurance and plan how you’re going to make sure the Inland Revenue know that you’re your own entity (this is all before you even have any work, unless you’re like me and already have some!). Then, periodically (not at that stage yet), you send this nice man your receipts and invoices and he figures out how much tax you have to pay and how much you can claim back, and seeing as his fee is something you can claim VAT back on, I’ve been told that I could potentially find him paying for himself in VAT claimback if I have enough expenses. If not, my overheads are small enough that he’s one of them. Win win.

With regard to IR35, your independence is very important. If you could be misconstrued as an employee of another company, it could cost you a lot. This is one of those things that I don’t really know a lot about, so my lovely accountant was kind enough to tell me that you basically have to fluff up your feathers, be all professional and contemptuous toward the fact that you would ever work for someone else. Being a freelancer, this could sometimes be a difficult differentiation to make, so I’m hoping to check boxes by getting some qualifications (finally, an excuse to do my ZCE, wonder what the Python equivalent is…anyone?), getting insured, getting terms and conditions and getting started.

Although this is a totally scary time of my life, I have made some amazing contacts who have been really supportive of my relative naïvety and I feel like I’m going to do very well. After all, I love what I do and now I get to be my own boss – who wouldn’t love that? Next exciting part (aside from starting work tomorrow!) is getting my stationary designed. I wasn’t a fan of it initially – I don’t like printing, and I don’t really work in that way (I’d prefer to email vcards than give out a business card) but I know that I’m in the minority there, so biting the bullet I am.

Sadly, this has been a meandering and ultimately pointless post, but I feel this is an occasion that needs to be marked, so help me mark it and wish me luck!

I’ve been out of the house for about 16 hours today, so I haven’t really had time to point my camera at anything. Playing with Amelie and watching her and Eva interact, she’s getting so big. Looking at when we first got her, she’s huge! She has a great personality, too.

I’ve been to see a friend about some really exciting freelance that I’m hoping to get involved on. The product is so random, but the client is totally into the idea of having a website and they (quite rightly) trust us to give them the best solution. They’ve had some amazing ideas about things that they want and I really can’t wait to get started on it!

I’ve also had a brilliant idea for a modular templating system, which should hopefully negate everything I hate about smarty, just including the stuff I need. If it works how I hope it’ll work, I’ll probably end up posting it here because I think it’ll be a nice, light and simple solution to a problem that I solve in a different way on every project I undertake!

I guess it’s all just a matter of timing, but I don’t think I’m lucky enough to get it just the way I want! History show, anyway.

Sorry for the ultimately pointless rambling. I guess that’s why I call it my blog!

Until yesterday, I haven’t really been affected by the current financial crisis. Sure, I noticed the price of stuff going up, but we switched our energy supplier and petrol appears to have lost about 20p a litre so it’s been a relative plateau for me – my funds have just leaned more towards food shopping than energy/fuel. Yesterday, however, it seems that the pending recession (I don’t even know if we’re actually in a recession now – we could be!) took its toll on the awesome agency I work for. It wouldn’t be fair of me to go into details of the whys and wherefores (largely because it’d be mostly speculation), but the upshot is that in a month today, I’ll be jobless.

Obviously, the potential repercussions of me not having gainful employment could be great – I’m getting married in exactly four weeks, Christmas is coming up and I have financial responsibilities and dependants. Weddings, contrary to popular belief, aren’t an expensive ordeal. Like most things, if you buy (operative word) into tradition and cliché then you could end up spending a load, but if you remember why you’re doing what you’re doing and remain selfless then you don’t have to blow all of your savings (nothing) on it! Having re-read that, the same goes for Christmas!

The reason that this is a little more than a twitter update is that I’m swaying towards freelancing for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it’s damned difficult to find a job at Christmas. I’ve had to do it before and it’s really stressful. Secondly, the (buzz-word-worthy) financial state of affairs seems to have scared small companies into not hiring people (I like working for small companies – I don’t function well as a number and a keycard). However, just because these companies aren’t hiring, doesn’t mean that they’re still not trying to make money. My plan is to put my name in the head of agencies in the area as a Swiss Army Freelancer type person and take any web projects that they can throw my way. I’ve always really wanted to take what I do into freelancing, but I’ve never really had the balls. It’s a big step! What I really need to do now is get my portfolio up and running, get my CV up-to-date and get on the phone.

This is kinda where anyone reading comes in. If you’re aware of any websites that need attention (and the owners are aware of it – I’m not a cold caller!) please get them to email me – with my gorgeous little designer buddy, I can offer a wealth of branding/internet services.

All this self-pimping has made me feel quite dirty, but it needs to be done!