I had a call last night from a friend working in a swiss startup. In first few seconds I thought he had been thrown out of home by his wife. And then he told me that the startup had lost all their data during last hour.

I was helping them on building the database and here it came in the middle of the night. We had to rule out piracy to come down to the fact that it was Django framework which did that. We were able to use the MySQL logs to extract some datas and finally got back the site running.

I’m still flabbergasted because it’s one of the best working team I’ve met. All the dudes there are very good professional and highly skilled. And yet error might still pop out of nowhere.

But I also have to see that team even after a full day of work was still able to react coldly in the wee hours. I’m so impressed.

I would have supposed this weekend to feel like others but I’ve done some unpacking this morning. I had hardcopies from 2004-2006 that remained to be filed. I guess this reminded me a lot of stories. I’ve found different id pictures.

I was finishing university, getting on a plane to Japan. I remember that I could be quite depressed but that the world was simple. I means I had deep thoughts about what-so-ever but I touch real world difficulties and hazard.

And now I’m scared because I know what a dressing code is and that I know that I usually pop the question about what’s you do for living?. I was blaming that behavior a few years ago. I can’t help myself wondering whether I’ve bettered or (as I think) I’ve got lost in the woods.

Sometimes when I look at the sky from my windows I wonder if we are not building the perfect place to act as happy people. I feel more and more than work is oriented towards consuming of happiness. Getting a DVD when a walk is free, watching the screen instead of knowing the city.

Thinking of the Celestine Prophecy I wonder if the happy ones are not the ones outside of the society. I mean the ones who evolves in the book disappear from sight. Don’t read me wrong: I’ve already took some sidetracks to be myself. But it’s getting harder and harder to convince myself that were heading for some humanism.

At least I’m back to blogging and life got much juicier but with the same longing questions.

Time flies since I’ve made this move of working as a freelancer. I’ve been around Paris and Geneva, I’ve been working 80 hours to avoid working 40 hours for somebody else. Here’s what I think.

Maybe I should start by counting the days I didn’t want to get up and get straight to work. Well I do remember three or five days which went this way. Whereas I remember having a 30 minutes glitch in my former wake-up plan just to get out of bed. I don’t even talk about getting in the suit…

By the way talking about the suit I’ve came upon some private posts in this blog about my alternatives views of life. I wonder whether money got me or if I have discovered that their is an equal part of the world wearing suits and being interesting minds.

But let’s get to the real matter: the job. Can’t say that everything is fantastic but common no job really is. Still I’m able to jump on occasions, discover much more things than when I was a engineer for an IT company and there’s something I like even more: you have to defend and to commit to your project so your clients will adopt them.

There were also a social switch. Although usually people don’t notice or may find that I have an odd personality I fear meeting new people. I mean once I’ve got to know somebody everything’s alright but I spend much will to open myself to others. Anybody could live with that except that you have to meet new people all the time and you have to act as catalyst when putting change into action. I still have some issues but I felt much better after getting the right resources (mainly sociology and psychology ones).

Friends and free time… Well I went back to living in community two years ago. Nowdays I think I just suck as roommate or a friend. I used to watch movies sharing the sofas, I used be a social drinker. Right now I’m getting up between six and six and half and I’m hushing out of the door if not working at my desk. At least I’ve was able to get in touch with friends in Paris and take extra time in the week when some needed.

Talking about friends pulls the loneliness talk, you the one their warn you about when you think about freelancer. Can’t stay I hadn’t my ups & downs but I’ve never felt lonely. You know when I was kid there was usually nobody one so I had to put up with myself. More or less I’ve found new persons to talk to having the same experience and I also like to share with other friends about the in and outs of this positions.

Working technics are also an issue: I’m still young and it would have been easier to watch and learn in a good company like ELCA. I was warned about it so I try to catch up on new methodologies, ideas and technologies by reading newspapers, magazine and books. I remember reading that the average computer engineer was reading a book per year; so I may even get an advantage.

Moving from technics to administrative matters is another subject. I surprised myself for dealing with the swiss administration pretty easily. First I have to say that the staff there is brilliant and forward thinking. And when it gets to money I find myself in a very good state of mind for sparing some penies. My accountant also told me that he was flabbergasted to find that I’ve written all my expense fees on special forms and that everything he needed was filed and order. Maybe it was one of my way to reassure me that I was doing good.

Yes I had my doubt ; honestly I started with the cash for living roughly two years with no earnings and I got the cash flow right from the first day. I remember counting the months thinking: ohh it’s been more than three months and I’m still in business… then 6 months, 1 year and so on. I still believe that I’m not in a balanced situation; maybe I’ll feel stong when I’ll reached six years of activity.

Well I haven’t covered all the things I wanted to talk about; maybe I’ll organize them later. I didn’t want to start talking about it publicly because I didn’t want to impact on my development. Maybe it’s time to tell the story.

To tell you what I’m up to now… I’m trying to enhance my reports by doing them in realtime. I’ve already built my billing system straight on it to be able to bill my clients on the first day of the month. Somehow I’m surprised that I’m not thinking about filling the pipelines.

If I could tell a first word of advise for freelancer wannabe:

• all start with a big contact;
• wait for the contract while sparing;
• stay humble when you explain what you can do and
• be spartan when it comes to invest (no money for the fancy things)