Basically, you have two options for lunch as a freelancer: eat in or go out. Let’s explore the options for and implications of each.
Eat In
Do not eat at your desk. That is for people with “regular” jobs who have to work in cubicles. You are a freelancer. So eat somewhere nice, like at the dining room table, the front porch on a sunny day, or the built-in picnic area in the trunk of your Rolls.
Make yourself something super tasty and healthy, the kind of thing you’d never be able to take to work in a rinsed-out cottage cheese container. Big salads with lots of ingredients and homemade dressing are good for this. Pasta with fresh veggies is good too, especially if you can combine it with a field trip to the grocery store for the fresh veggies. And new pens.
Read, do the crossword, play fetch with the dog — whatever you do, take a real lunch. Maybe have a beer. As long as you’re back at work afterward and functional enough for whatever tasks come next, there’s no one to tell you what you should or should not do at lunchtime.
Eat Out
Invite at least one other freelance friend who wants some company. Lift the burden of listening to you recount your day from your significant other and place it on your freelance lunch friend. Allow him to do the same to you.
Even better than a freelance friend is a recently and happily unemployed friend. They really know how to stretch out and luxuriate in the lunch hour … or lunch hour and a half.
Declare the off-site lunch a field trip. It makes it seem educational.
Go out with a friend who’s also a marketing expert/book editor/businessperson. Talk about your current project while you sip coffee and wait for your lunches to be served — now it’s a tax write-off.
Today’s Special
Now I’m headed to lunch. I’m eating in — scrambled eggs with herbs from the garden on whole-wheat bread I made myself with local-ish cheddar cheese. Eating at the dining room table with a cup of coffee, followed by fetch in the backyard with the dog.
And that, my friend, is how you freelance lunch.