Commute? 9 to 5? Pfffff!! No, Grazie!

Their professions? Many.

Their ways of working? Endless.

What do they have in common? Inner strength and the grace to know how to face the good and the bad that comes with total freedom.

If you're an Expat living your life how you want to live your life, where you want to live your life, then you probably work for yourself. It's a challenge, yes, but everything worth doing in life will be challenging, it will never be perfect, and it will require discipline and hard work. I understand that clearly. To me, the rewards are priceless but what has been greater is the comfort and happiness that I take from my days! Why didn't I do this sooner?

This field and my clients have been very kind to me. It might be due to the fact that there are very few Italian to English translators in the US, and even fewer who work with European companies from the US. Yes, I received a warm welcome into this profession. But working for ourselves is a learning process, and we still make mistakes.

Today I found a great article about the top 10 mistakes freelancers make and it reminded me so much of what Julia's said, because it mirrors what many of us also go through. Julia is not a translator, but she is a freelancer living in Italy and she wrote a post about how much she has grown professionally over the last decade. Oh, trust me! Every day clients ask me to quote on projects, and I can relate! I've been learning to defend my work, but it definitely comes with practice.

The top 10 mistakes made include "Charging too little" and "Choosing the wrong clients", but what I liked the best was the last one:

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Failing to be yourself!
"Often we take work because we need the income,
but it doesn’t align with who we are. And we feel awful about it,
and slowly we begin to hate ourselves. Until we no longer want to do
the work. How to avoid:" Well, for the rest of the article go => here.

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Definitely. I've learned not to do that to myself! It took so much research and training to be able to do this well and to finally take control of my life that I chose to do what works for me. How? By opening my horizons, working with good clients and shooooing away negativity.

I cannot emphasize enough to others how important it is to listen to your gut feeling! Listen to yourself! Honestly, if something is giving you a bad feeling, then find out why and what you can do to change it, even if it's how you deal with it... life's too precious to ignore yourself.

It took time, but I finally opened my own path and it's very enjoyable to walk down a path when you chose it, when you opened it for your self. This is my own path :)



Meanwhile, since I work my own hours at home, I like to go out to get fresh air each morning. I find it soothing. But that means that most people are either at work or in school, so I find myself surrounded by moms with little kids.

Yesterday I came across Santa, and while most little kids cried or were scared of him, one little girl beamed with joy and she ran to Santa! I quickly snapped a picture. Too cute. Notice the mom with her toddler on the top right hand corner? When I get out of the house in the morning, I'm surrounded by happy moms, I tell you :)

You know, to be honest, while I'm making this huge move to Rome, I decided to stay away from negative people and negative blogs. While we cannot ignore every negative person, we don't have to be part of their negativity. Once I did that, I found myself genuinely focusing on productive ways of doing things which ended up transferring into good results professionally and personally. I found this amazing...