If you eat them all at once, it’s just one meal!

Being a freelancer is challenging. Some people think the hardest part is never actually getting any actual freelance work that actually pays, and they’re right. However, freelancers face another challenge just as great: when you’re home all day “working,” it’s impossible to have fewer than three lunches.

Until today. That’s right, after over a year of being freelancer, I finally achieved my goal of eating only one lunch. How did I accomplish this seemingly insurmountable task? Let me start at the beginning.

I woke up early, around 9:30, and scrolled through Twitter while drinking a cup of coffee. I clicked on about five different articles and left the tabs open, intending to read them later. Then something incredible happened: I started reading one of the articles. It took me a full half hour to finish, at which point I realized that I was kind of hungry.

I went into the kitchen and made myself a breakfast of scrambled eggs and toast (gluten-free!). By the time I sat down to eat, it was almost 11. I noticed I had an email from a guy who’d offered me actual paying work in the past and eagerly clicked on it. It was an assignment! A paying assignment!

Once I finished wolfing down my breakfast, I began the project. So engrossed was I that I didn’t even look up from my computer until two full hours later! Since it was 1 p.m., well after my usual first lunch time, I went into the kitchen and made myself two sandwiches (on gluten-free bread!) of turkey, grated cheese, hummus, avocado and the few pieces of lettuce I could find that weren’t browning. I sat back down and ate while I worked.

After another couple of hours of hard work, I decided I deserved a snack. I went into the kitchen and warmed up some leftover chili. It was a full week old, but I figured it was probably fine. There wasn’t much, so it definitely qualified as a snack portion of chili, not a second lunch portion, even though I put half a container of sour cream on it.

While I ate, I continued to work on my project and, a couple of hours later, I completed it! I emailed in the finished project and, proud of myself for working so hard on something that would actually make me upwards of $100, decided I deserved a proper lunch. However, when I looked at the clock, I was shocked to find that it was already 5 p.m.! Time flies when you’re actually working!

Since it was dinner time, I used the remains of a rotisserie chicken to make tacos with avocado and the rest of the sour cream, because I deserved it. After finishing my dinner, I laid down and turned on the TV. A couple of hours later, I ordered Thai food on Seamless. I wasn’t hungry, exactly, but I figured since I’d only had one lunch that day, I should eat a second dinner. I ate while watching a marathon of “The Fosters” and went to bed around 10 p.m., exhausted from another busy day.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring, but now I know the secret to avoiding multiple lunches, if I so choose, is to simply have actual work to do, eat a late breakfast, a big snack, an early dinner and a later dinner. The solution was right there all along! I encourage all my fellow freelancers to use my tricks to avoid eating several lunches as well. If you want to, that is, because when you’re “working” from home, what else is there to do? Clean? HAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Actually, I should clean. Maybe tomorrow!