A few weeks ago, I gave a talk about my book Vriendschap in tijden van eenzaamheid (‘Friendship in times of loneliness’). When the conversation turned to the topic of making new friends at different stages of our lives, I got a few interesting questions from the audience, such as: Isn’t freelancing lonely? How do you make new friends post-college if you don’t have colleagues?
It got me thinking about the way in which I have made new friends over the last few years. If you are someone who works from home for various clients as a freelancer, you indeed miss out on the casual interactions that go with being part of a team. There’s no-one to ask you how your weekend was on Monday; no-one to have a chat with around the water cooler.
It seems like a no-brainer that the workplace is where most people make new friends post-college. Because where do we spend the most active hours of our day, and often with the same select group of people? Right, at work. Our work and private lives moreover overlap more than ever. Because our bosses now send us late-night messages thanks to online workspaces; our colleagues like our holiday photos on Instagram; while most of us can now truly work from anywhere, at any time. Under these circumstances, it would make sense that you might be more in touch with your colleagues than with anyone else – at least if you are a salaried worker, that is.
Employers moreover often stimulate friendships at work, through teambuilding events for instance. Because they realise that employees who report having a good friend in the workplace are often more motivated and engaged at work. Half of Belgians see their colleagues as friends with whom they can relax outside of the workplace, while 76% of Belgians say that having an excellent relationship with their colleagues benefits their productivity. Four in 10 Belgians regularly meet up with colleagues after work to hang out and to discuss matters that they don’t have time for at work.
In spite of all this, I think that freelancing has in fact helped me to make new friends in my thirties. Because a traditional working environment isn’t necessarily the perfect or even only setting where one can forge new friendships. Things like competition, power, ambition and financial dependence can quickly complicate a friendship with a colleague. What if your colleagues have an issue with your close friendship with another colleague and become jealous? What if your favourite colleague suddenly becomes your boss, or you suddenly find yourselves vying for the same position? Are you also friends outside of work; or does the friendship end when you clock out?
For all these reasons, entering into friendships at work wasn’t something that came naturally to me during the periods in which I had a salaried job. Often, I only became friends with that one fun colleague after either of us left their job. The reverse also happened – when we no longer had work connecting us, we didn’t have much to talk about, it turned out.
Since I went freelance, I no longer see the same familiar faces every day, but there is much greater diversity in my contacts, and those contacts over time have gradually resulted in friendships (shoutout to Linda, with whom I write this newsletter and to whom I was introduced by Elisabeth, whom I met when we both wrote for the same magazine).
As a freelancer, I network more often to make sure that I keep on meeting interesting clients. Stepping into the world outside and networking means: a) meeting new people, and b) often running into the same people. And those happen to be the two basic prerequisites to forming new friendships. A ‘networking contact’, the type of connection that both parties hope to benefit from, isn’t exactly the Holy Grail of friendships, but if you network with fellow freelancers and other types of peers, there is a chance that you will meet people who will become true friends over time.
Then there are those people with whom I intensely work on a project for a short period of time, after which point our ways again part. We get to know one another pretty well and pretty quickly, but we don’t share a boss or workspace in a permanent capacity, as a result of which things like a sense of competition are less of an issue. Such collaborations often also yield some kind of connection, with temporary freelance colleagues becoming acquaintances and sometimes friends.
Having interests outside of work, interests that you can discuss with your friends, is a final factor that is important to the development of friendships. Freelancing allows me to devote time to my passion projects every now and then, as well as allowing me to arrange my work schedule so that I have more time for courses and hobbies. This might not be true for everyone, but when I still had a full-time salaried job, I would often plonk down on my couch after my commute home, put on a TV show and not leave said couch for the rest of the evening. And although Netflix might be a good conversation starter, there’s really only so much you can say about fictional characters on screen, even if they can almost come to feel like friends after a few seasons.
How does freelancing influence your social life? Let us know by emailing us or commenting on this post on our website.
Speak soon,
Selma
I just came across this post and love it! I freelanced for two years and so relate.
Have you heard about Groove? I'm admittedly biased because I'm on the team, but it's been a game changer for me in terms of easy social connection (with no status!) in a remote working world. Check it out here - I'd love to welcome you on there! https://medium.com/groove-with-us/authentic-human-connection-powers-our-best-work-and-lives-4dfe982b36ac