Sometimes I am needed by people other than my clients.

I have loved ones who live an hour away from my residence and sometimes need me. Their health is questionable, and one of them is in a senior care facility. As their closest family member, I need to be consistently aware of their well-being and safety.

Everyone who works and is in the same situation knows that it is often difficult to juggle working and looking after their loved one(s). I consider myself blessed in this case because I am self-employed. The authors are my respected clients, but I am “the boss.” I have known unfortunate people who worked a staff job (i.e., non-freelance) and were fired for taking too much time off to care for an ailing loved one. Talk about kicking someone when they’re down.

This is not to say that caring for someone while freelancing is necessarily easy, however. If an emergency arises, I must be prepared to quickly rearrange my schedule so that I can respond in a timely manner and still meet my deadline. If I suddenly need to travel to my loved one(s) today, then the work planned for today can be rescheduled for tomorrow, and tomorrow’s scheduled work can be done another day. If I must work on the weekend, I will. There’s a Ravens game Sunday afternoon? Too bad, so sad.

This is one of the many reasons why it is important to plan ahead of time what you will do each day and divide the tasks realistically. After all, if you have no idea what you will do on Tuesday, what exactly will you reschedule to Wednesday (or another day) if you suddenly need to go and take care of your loved one on Tuesday?

This is also why it is important to leave yourself some “wiggle room” when planning out a project that has a specific deadline. Pretend that the deadline is the day before the actual one, and you have a time cushion in case there is an emergency.

If you are caring for a loved one while working, God bless you. What advice do you have for others in your situation?