You probably know more than one thing. Knowledge that you have acquired over the years as a professional. It can be photography, copywriting and project management to spanning over a totally different area of expertise such as accounting, skiing or cooking. As a freelancer you often use all of your skills, some more than others. It’s funny how we spend years and years (and money!) on perfecting our craftmanship. We train, we struggle, we read books, blogs and industry magazines to see what’s next and to keep up with the pace of our business. Just to once in a while find yourself using one of those skills that just happened to leach on along the way.

During the first 10 weeks of 2019 this has been the case for me. I have produced around 17 different pieces of text for my clients, while I have only been doing 8 photography assignments. Don’t get me wrong, I love writing and telling a great story using words, but it has never been what I have been studying or planned to work with. I have been studying photography, film making and communication specialized on digital platforms, but never the art of writing.

Talents come and go

All the different types of jobs we do seems to come in waves, some months I do almost 95% photography and just a small amount of writing, while other months there is more of the latter. It seems as the jobs I do as a copywriter are the most frequent in those months that somehow are “in between”, like December and January for example. Can it be that text is less production heavy in terms of gear, location and sometimes other talents involved to get the job done? As for a company, you often have planned your content production so all the images/film and what now is already created in advance before the holidays. Then, when everything comes close to hit that publish button, realization of that some text is missing or you need to clarify this and that and some extra copy is needed here and there.

I don’t know why it turns out this way and if its only for me it happens. But, I think it’s both funny and fascinating that those talents that just leaches on along the way can help you make a living, without you ever studying or planning for it!

Do you have some talents that just tagged along and helps you make a living? Let us know!