I’ve been freelance for over seven years. In that time, my work has slowly changed a little in its nature, along with my professional interests, and the shape of the wider market. In a quiet week, following just-about wrapping a few projects, it felt time for a more formal review of my work to date.

I loosely followed Matt’s notes on his own career review as a starting point: looking at all my past work, and analysing it. What did the successes have in common? What would I like to do more of? Are there trends? As usual, it’s easy as a lone practitioner to assume that it’s all just gig-after-gig, but that’s not true.

Some focused time with pen an paper let me look clearly at my work. It turns out that over all the wide range of projects, there really are trends, and there is definitely expertise built over time that is worth sharing. So it was definitely useful to take that time to do this properly.

I then performed an extra step after Matt’s original list of questions: I looked at the how of each project. How did those circumstances occur? How did the work happen? Who is involved? Who is committed? That helped me gain a better focus on what circumstances are most successful for me, and how I enable the work to happen.

Having done all that, there was a small piece of writing work to synthesize and explain everything. At which point, I promptly got a cold - not COVID-19, I should add - which knocked out the end of my week. So finishing up the review work would have to begin in week 375. Still, the groundwork was laid this week, and it was a good way to use some time off project work.