20 Fulfilling, Flexible Jobs For People Who Ditch The 9-to-5

The work entails translating materials, both verbal and oral, from one language to another. Translators can work for agencies or in-house for companies such as airlines, but some choose to work independently for clients on a freelance basis.

Depending on which route you choose, this job can be very flexible — plus, you'll be able to use your language skills, learn more about different cultures and perform rewarding work. 

If you have an education background, curriculum designer could be a good fit for you. You'll design curricula for students at different age and grade levels, ensuring that they meet the needs of the school or district and communicate the material effectively. Some curriculum designers also work with education companies. 

You'll likely need some teaching experience and might need to be licensed to get a job as a curriculum designer. You should also have plenty of technical and soft skills for developing the materials, as well as experience and comprehension of the subject area you're covering. For example, if your working with high school math, you should have a strong knowledge of math concepts through calculus. 

Virtual assistants are increasingly in high demand.

You can do your job from almost anywhere as a virtual assistant, and it comes with numerous benefits. Turn it into a full-time business or work part-time according to your personal schedule. 

Being a virtual assistant requires you to be super organized and have excellent communication skills. It's all about keeping track of your clients' schedules and needs and making sure you know what those entail. There are, of course, plenty of challenges with the job — you must be on call pretty much all the time, for one. But if you a master at staying organized and want to help others do the same, this could be the job for you.

This is an ideal job for people who are strong communicators and enjoy learning about talking to people from different cultures.

Working from the comfort of your own home (or wherever you choose to work), being an online English teacher allows you to flex your English skills while instructing students of all ages, often abroad. Often, the curriculum will be provided to you, depending on the specific type of work. You may just have conversations orally over platforms like Skype, or you might also offer guidance on written communication.

There are many companies that facilitate English teaching online, or you can market your services independently. Some jobs may require minimum education credentials, such as a bachelor's degree, while others will simply require that you be a native English speaker.  

This is a job that requires some experience and technical skills, but if you have a background in film, you may find it very rewarding. You can work in studio or work as a freelancer, taking the raw footage for movies and piecing it together to create a cohesive narrative.

You'll work closely with cinematographers and other editors to ensure that you are meeting the needs and ideas of the director and translating her vision correctly. 

This job is often demanding, but you'll play an instrumental role in creating masterpieces and communicating a compelling story to audiences.

An often extremely lucrative position, network architects design computer networks, such as local area networks (LANs), cloud computing systems, intranets and others. This is an important job that involves extensive plan and analysis of the needs of an organization. Along with having the necessary IT and computer skills, network architects must have analytical, planning and financial skills to understand the needs and scope of projects.

Network architects may work in-house, although many serve as consultants to different types of organizations. They play an instrumental role in helping businesses meet their goals. There is a lot of potential for flexibility, and, as discussed, the job is high-paying.

Working with artists and designers to create a narrative, characters, landscape and other aspects of video games, video game designers have a fun as well as complicated role in the development of these products.

Along with creativity and communication skills, you should have knowledge of programming languages and the software necessary for executing your concept, as well as be able to work in teams. 

While some video game designers work on site, others work from the comfort of their own homes. 

Caring for those who are unable to do so themselves is the ultimate in rewarding work. Home health aides assist people who need help with performing daily tasks like getting dressed, cooking, taking medicine and more. 

You'll generally be assisting people who prefer to stay in their own homes as opposed to moving into a care facility, so ensuring that your clients feel comfortable and respected is key. 

If you receive more training and certification, you might consider becoming a nursing assistant, which will enable you to offer more services and mean a higher salary.

If you have a gift for capturing beautiful images, photography can be an ideal career. Working at events such as weddings and parties, traveling to take pictures around the world, and taking pictures for newspapers, magazines and other publications are just some of the ways photographers earn a living.

Some photographers are employed by agencies or companies, while others work independently. If you choose the latter route and work as a freelancer, you can make the job extremely flexible according to your own schedule.

Photographers need to have a strong aesthetic as well as a host of technical skills — it's not all about the art! Many study their art in college.

Copywriters write creative and compelling content for businesses. Most businesses have websites, apps, and marketing materials that need words. Which means that they need someone who is good with words to write them. 

Copywriters often work closely with the design teams to help establish a narrative for their clients. And they'll often have to go through several rounds of edits, too.

UX and UI designers are the ones who basically get websites and apps up and running for users. Businesses big and small need these designers. UX designers build the user experience, which is the interaction that users have with the site or app.

And UI designers then make that experience friendly usually with visual design, typography, and more.

Illustrators work for a number of different types of clients. As an illustrator, you may work for a book author designing the cover or pages of their book. Or you might work for a company, designing logos, creating clip art for their marketing materials, and tackling other illustration needs. 

You may also work for creative businesses like tattoo shops, coming up with tattoo concepts or T-shirt companies creating shirt designs.

Virtually every company could benefit from a bookkeeper. And you can do this job totally remotely a lot of the time. 

Bookkeepers simply oversee a company's financial data and compliance. You'd be responsible for maintaining accurate books on account payable and receivable, as well as payroll. You'd also track daily expenses and reconciliations, create financial reports, and more. 

Musicians can make money in a few ways. Either you can pick up gigs playing music at local establishments, or you can even teach classes to students who want to learn how to sing or play certain instruments.

In fact, you can even teach music lessons virtually, creating guided online lessons for certain songs and selling chord sheets. Or tutoring via video calls.

When considering which careers will make you happy, think about your skills, interests and priorities. Perhaps a having high-earning job is important to you. Maybe you're looking to fulfill a passion but don't care as much about the money.

Consider what you've enjoyed doing in the past, whether for work or play, and think about how you could weave these interests into a career. If you know a job you'd love to have requires further training or education, you might want to go back to school.

Ultimately, a career is rewarding if you feel good about what you're doing and happy about the end result and process of getting there. Not every moment will be perfect — everyone tasks they dread doing, even if they love their jobs — but overall, you should feel like the work is keeping you content.

In addition to finding a job that's rewarding, you should also pay attention to which careers are in high-demand by combing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (it will tell you the expected earnings and job growth for specific professions) and reading up on current trends. (Be sure to check out our list of in-demand jobs, too!) Think about the long-term potential for your career, not just what makes you happy now.