Oh yes - I can identify with this post. January 1-15 I had NOTHING. Since then, I have been maniacally busy. This is good, in that I am earning some serious money. It is also bad, as I have no social life.

The last sentence of your post is oh so true. However, I don't have the same experience regarding workload. Along with the dead periods and the manic periods, there are a lot of "nicely quiet" periods. By this I mean 4-5 hours of work a day: plenty of free time to do lovely things while still earning enough to live on.

Don't worry about it. Being a translator is like being an actor - you go from "gig" to "gig". Even experienced professionals have considerable downtimes, but they make up any such time with long-term projects.

I have this one client, they keep me busy for about 7 to 8 weeks a year or so, but the money I make from this one client constitutes about 70%-80% of my total annual income.

Now, I have just landed another client that will, in all likelihood, keep me very busy ...