Freelance hours, invisible labor, and the myth of flexibility.

I’m back to freelancing again after a short love affair with corporate life, and to my surprise, the hardest adjustment hasn’t been the workload or the sleepless nights—it’s how quickly my family forgot I actually work.

It starts with small things:

“Can you pick this up for me?”

“Can you just do this real quick?”

But it always returns to one deceptively casual question—asked with a smile and dripping with unintentional condescension:

“So, what do you do all day?”

It’s usually dropped at some harmless event—someone’s kitchen, a casual lunch, the kind of setting where people feel especially comfortable underestimating your life—by someone whose calendar is filled with recurring meetings and whose paycheck arrives every other Friday like an Amazon subscription.

It’s not meant to be an insult. It’s just… curiosity.

The kind that feels less like a question and more like a TSA screening for your career choices.

But somehow, when you’re a freelancer, it feels like an accusation.

The truth? Some days, even I don’t know what I did all day.

I start with the best intentions—coffee brewed, to-do list written in my best pretend-architectural handwriting on a fresh Moleskin notebook, and an inbox that’s basically a Choose Your Own Anxiety adventure.

Then I answer emails I didn’t expect to get, revise a logo I already sent with “FINAL” in all caps, and redesign an Instagram carousel that somehow has 23 slides. I jump from pitching a new client to debating a hex code, to wondering if “networking” still counts if it’s just me talking to myself on Threads.

At some point, I remember I haven’t eaten. Or posted. Or invoiced.

And yet… I’ve somehow worked a full day and now still need to buy groceries, go to the gym, walk the dog, and maybe even talk to a human who isn’t a chatbot.

Freelancing is creative freedom, sure—if you ignore the pressure, panic, and PayPal invoices. It’s freedom with a deadline, and self-employment with self-doubt.

We plan. We pitch. We present. We price. And yet we do it all while trying to look like we’re not still wearing pajama pants by 2pm, but we are.

It’s not that we aren’t working—it’s that the work is invisible.

No one sees the mental gymnastics behind pricing a project, or the 14 tabs open for something that ends up being two lines of copy and a brand color that “feels more coastal.”

No one sees the time it takes to get the work, not just do the work.

That’s why we post like our rent depends on it—because sometimes, it does.

(Oh—and while we’re on the subject of social spirals, feel free to follow along on Facebook or Threads.)

So when someone asks, “What do you do all day?”

I want to say:

• I chase the work.
• I do the work.
• I chase more work.

Because freelancing isn’t lazy or lucky. And definitely not for the faint of heart.

It’s a full-time job—with a full-time identity crisis attached.

So the next time someone asks what I do all day, I might just say:

Everything. And then some.

And then smile sweetly and hand them an invoice.