One week from right now (with adjustments for the international date line) my family puts our boots on the soil of New Zealand. We’ll be there for 10 days, enjoying 70 degree heat in the middle of American winter. We’ll visit with good friends who currently call the north island home. We’ll camp, visit Hobbiton, ride a ferry, swim and generally cause a whole lot of trouble.

Vacation as a freelancer is complicated, but you can make it work out for the best. I talked about it at some length in an earlier post.  If you can’t be bothered to read it, the upshot was freelancers make “vacation time” by working ahead of our financial needs. Once I accumulate enough extra cash — off I go.

Tools exist to help us do this. For example, I wrote this post on the 14th. WordPress allows scheduling of posts in advance, which I’m using to keep the blog going during my absence.

So on one hand, as a freelancer I get unlimited time off — assuming I’m willing to do work on a compressed schedule.

On the other, though, a freelancer never has time off. Never. I guarantee you that throughout my vacation I will consistently “noodle” on projects, take notes and otherwise give mental space to my writing. I’ll tweak my current fiction project. I’ll check email. I’ll plan my 2012 schedule.

It’s part of the life — and a trait of anybody who wants to succeed as a small business owner.

Not necessarily a bad thing. Not necessarily a good thing. Just a facet of freelancing you should know about if you’re thinking about this work-life choice.

Thanks for listening.