Farina works four days a week as a Business Performance Manager in a logistics company. Every Tuesday, she works as a freelance artist—as well as being the marketing, accounts, and mail order manager.
This will sound familiar if you’re self-employed. Turning your hobby into a job is about having more time for your passion, but also new responsibilities.
For Farina, this means that there’s no such thing as a “typical” working day. At least, not on Tuesdays.
Business Snapshop: Farina Hommes
- Location: Dusseldorf
- Industry/Product: Acrylic and watercolor painting
- Who’s behind it: Farina, artist and business performance manager
- Founded: 2020
- One thing I’m especially proud of: That I took a leap of faith and started my business
- Website: www.farinahommes.com
“Bringing color and joy into the home”
Farina enjoys creating acrylic paintings for a living. With her colorful works of art, she wants to bring ease and joie de vivre into the homes of her customers. She gets her inspiration from “little moments of happiness”. A beautiful flower by the wayside, a robin on the windowsill, an interesting color combination. Farina has an eye for beauty in everyday life. As soon as she feels inspired she starts painting, she gets lost in the process, and forgets all sense of space and time.
It all sounds very romantic at first. And it is. But from the moment your passion stops being just for yourself, the end of the “creation process” no longer means it’s time to relax. Once Farina has hung up her latest painting to dry and cleaned the brushes, that’s when things really get going.
“I should spend more time on it”
Creativity and painting have always been a part of Farina’s life. When she started working, she found less and less time for it. But in her dwindling moments of creativity, she remembered how much joy it brought her. Every time, she thought, “I should spend more time on this!”
Most of us know that feeling. But between work and everyday life, it’s easier said than done. And Farina thought the same. Until she decided to just go for it in 2020. She reduced her working hours at her job so she’d have more time to paint. “I didn’t want to look for excuses anymore. I had to broaden my horizons.”
There’s no standard daily routine
Some Tuesdays, Farina’s at her easel from dawn till dusk. With paint splodges on her clothes and a brush in her hand, she experiments with acrylics and watercolor. Painting brings her joy. And days like this are the most beautiful because she can completely immerse herself in her passion.
However, as an artist, you always need to be in the right mood and feel inspired to create. And that often comes in phases. Sometimes Farina paints non-stop for days, and sometimes she doesn’t paint at all. But it never gets boring because, as she puts it, painting only accounts for a third of her work as a freelancer.
Most of her time is spent on marketing, because ultimately, Farina wants her art to find a new home at some point. Taking photos of her work, writing descriptions, updating her website and online store, posting on social media, sending newsletters… Farina does all the work that most companies hire an entire team for.
Best case scenario: orders come in. And this means writing invoices, packing parcels, and shipping orders. If there’s a holiday season like Christmas coming up, her studio can turn into a packing station for a few days.
Being your own boss—what’s that like?
When Farina finishes her job as a “numbers person” on Monday evening and calls it a day, many of her colleagues think she’ll be relaxing on the couch for the next 24 hours. The assumption is close, since Farina doesn’t have to set an alarm on Tuesday mornings to leave the house, catch the bus, and get to the office on time.
But just because her daily routine is less strict, it doesn’t mean she takes her tasks any less seriously. Farina knows that everything she does has a direct influence on her passion project. The difference is: Farina doesn’t decide what she wants to do each day until she wakes up in the morning. Painting, marketing, or accounting? Of course, she enjoys some things more than others.
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But that’s exactly what makes self-employment so attractive—being entirely in control of what she does, every Tuesday.
You can learn more about Farina’s colorful passion on her website and Instagram account.