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Something I wrote on Linkedin but am sharing here too

I renewed my Zoom membership today. The price has gone up over last year, but I do all my podcasts through it and I find it extremely useful. It has liberated me from the need to have a production set up while interviewing people.
My phone and laptop are a couple of things I don’t mind mind spending on now, unlike earlier when I had left my salaried job and set off on a freelance career. I am an Apple user and I go for higher memory and screen resolutions in my iPhone. I do all my social media work and video editing through it. I use my Mac for my long copy writing. As I am using it now.
The ‘guilt’ went once I realised that these are business investments for me. Not an expression of personal vanity. I do feel good about being an Apple user, but that’s another story.
The realisation about ‘business expenses’ first happened when I changed the CA who did our taxes sometime back. I had just moved to being a freelancer from being a salaried person. Our existing CA was out of his depth, did not give clear advice on sales tax etc and I had to pay a penalty despite paying my taxes! The new CA, recommended by a Parsi pickle seller friend, was 4 times more expensive that my previous one. Once he came on board, I did not have to bother about things which are not what my life as a writer should be about. As good a business expense as it gets!
The parallel I drew to this was with the finance department in the agencies I had worked in, which was a staff cost and not a profit centre, and which took care of all the financial work while we focused on market research.
What 8 years of being a freelancer has taught me is that it is paramount to have a clear vision (what are you in this for) and perspective (don’t compare it with the world you have left behind). Especially for those who have been in service before.
A recent example of this was was when I was unwell due to post Covid complication and had to rest for more that two months. I was not happy about the state of things till one day it struck me that rest, in this case, was ‘action.’ The only way I could get back to action was by resting and well, here I am doing what makes me happy. Writing at my desk with my cat snoozing in front of me.
I would love to know from fellow freelancers who moved out from corporate world about how the ride has been for you. How do you keep yourself motivated?

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