The Freelance Chicken

I’ve been trying to go freelance for years. In a way, it’s a bit like flying the coop. Everyone sits in the office, knowing that, all in all, it is not a place they wish to be. But they sit patiently, like chickens, laying little eggs of information and content for the farmer – in this case, the manager – to collect and take back to the farm. As they sit and occasionally roam around in limited space, the equivalent of wandering over to the office coffee machine, they begin to wonder what the hell landed them there in the first place. In their chickeny minds, they reflect on the alienating nature of their surroundings, swiftly deciding that the best course of action is to take their eggs elsewhere. That way, they can reap the rewards of their laying without suffering the general coop environment. So, in a storm of feathers and a bawk, buk buk!!, the chicken goes running along the corridor as fast as their chicken legs carry them, and out they go. They’re free!

But here’s the crux: the chicken must now set about finding a way to sell their eggs without the farm system it had so heavily relied upon in the past. And that, any freelance chicken will tell you, is far from easy. Locked up in the coop d’office, you start to think it would be easy out there. You imagine yourself to be a chicken with such entrepreneurial skill that selling your own eggs will be as easy as you like, but faced with the reality, you soon realise that you must spend most of your week sending out emails and calling farms, plucking up the courage only to be met with the response that they already have an egg contract and do not buy from individual sellers. Before you know it, you’ve intentionally broken back into your old coop just to get some mental peace – at least in the coup, you can get some other stuff done when you’re not laying for the company. 9-5 is a long day. In fact, if you’re clever about it, you can make the farm think that you spend more time laying eggs than you actually do and then use the excess time for recreation. But it doesn’t take too long to rediscover that, all in all, the coop is an absolute vibe killer. Time to fly it again!