Finally Making the Jump to Freelance

In other words: Some life and professional updates and my thoughts on the 9-6 hustle, balancing writing with a day job, and being afraid but doing it anyways.

I have a couple of acknowledgments I’d like to make before we dive into this issue:

1. Acknowledgement #1: The truth of history is captured and immortalized by many things, but especially through writing. Therefore, please know that I stand with Palestine and am fully against the genocide being committed against them by the Zionist Israeli government and backed by our current U.S. administration. I am irritated as hell that my tax dollars fund this empire’s military and am heartened to see many Americans, particularly students and other young adults, protesting in the streets against genocide. As someone with a parent who’s a Vietnam War boat refugee, all of this news reminds me of the U.S.’ horrific war crimes in Vietnam and the student-led anti-war protests that happened in response. We say never again, but here we are, history repeating itself. I am thinking especially of young Palestinian children separated from their parents, Palestinian mothers who found out their babies died without a chance to say goodbye, Palestinian fathers who will never see their spouses and children again, Palestinian journalists risking their lives reporting on what’s going on while on the ground, and Palestinian writers whose writings are now being systematically banned across the world. I am also thinking of my brown and Muslim friends in the U.S. who are now experiencing and witnessing an uptick in Islamaphobia. I am so sorry this is all happening. Please sign this letter to stand in solidarity with other writers for Palestine. Continue to boycott these businesses and institutions. And donate here to support medical workers in Palestine who are working around the clock to save lives.

2. Acknowledgement #2: You might have noticed it’s been several weeks since my previous newsletter issue. I’m seriously, so sorry about that! I elaborate on the specific reasons why in this issue, but to quickly summarize: it’s so much a mix of things. One of the reasons is being crushed by my debilitating perfectionism and self-induced performance anxiety where writing is involved. My goal with this newsletter has always been to write and share my writing more consistently and I’ve already stumbled at the beginning. I’m honestly… quite embarrassed. But here I am, trying again. Thanks for your patience and understanding as I continue to figure out how to have a healthier relationship with writing and publishing.

Now on to the main essay.

For the past several months, I’ve told my friends and family that I wanted to try working for myself and go freelance. Over the past three years of working full-time, I’d become incredibly disillusioned with the 9-5, 9-6, 7-3, 8-5, 10-6 what have you, hustle that pervaded my and nearly every working adult’s life. I grinded really hard in school for seventeen years towards this big shiny goal of gaining a good education and getting a degree (I actually have two! I went ballistic and studied three majors) so I could one day score a high-paying job, pay my parents back for all their sacrifices, and afford the life I’d always wanted to live. I even had the dream that I could work and write on the side at the same time and pull both off and feel fulfilled. But there has never been a waking moment since I started working full-time where I sat my desk and clocked into my job and didn’t think: This is it? This is to be my life? Forever?

I’m sorry but absolutely not! I refuse to be a victim forced to follow a conventional path and controlled by the throes of capitalism like this. Young people deserve better than to be sold lies about the “guaranteed” perks of going through university, pulling out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans to do so, and getting a degree only to be met with forty-years of monotonously working our whole lives away. Interestingly, wages are starting to match the rise in inflation and prices in 2023, but not enough to outpace it. Univerisal basic income is still nowhere to be found. This means we’re all still stuck living under this system for the foreseeable future. No one deserves this! Not even adult boomers who gritted their teeth and got through working day and night anyways and think young people should pay their dues. We are all victims.

For me, at the very least, I want to take back control over my time. With my previous full-time position, it was the hardest I’d ever worked for a job, I barely had time to take care of myself, and I very quickly became done with the whole thing. So I gave myself deadlines for when I’d resign. But as capitalism would demand, I kept pushing the months back.

I’d proclaimed to all of my friends at my birthday party earlier this year in February that I was going to resign in May, which would’ve been one year at my job. But then May came around and I’d spent a lot of money traveling to three different states across two weeks. I frankly needed money to pay off the credit card debt I’d racked up, so I thought to myself: what’s the harm in staying a few more months? But there’s always a downside to staying where you fundamentally don’t belong.

This job chipped away and ate at my soul every day. I felt like a shell of myself, tired from working so much, disenchanted with the whole industry, and furiously hungry because I either ate lunch at 3 PM or skipped it entirely because there was always more work to be done. I’d very often cry during and after work because I constantly kept getting negative, critical feedback, but I was working so hard. By that point, my mom and many of my friends told me to quit. I truly considered it. As this usually goes, the stable paycheck was nice and the healthcare even better (though I never had time to use it). But it was really my parents’ happiness everytime I paid for their meal whenever we ate out, the small smiles of gratitude, and playful arm tugs after a full belly, that kept me going and persisting through the ups and downs of working at this job.

So I decided: okay, September. I’ll stay for a few more months, just to get through the summer and then leave before the autumn equinox. July came around and that’s when I had to unexpectedly rush a family member to the ER where they stayed in the hospital for over two weeks. Those hospital bills man…and I was too proud to ask my community for help paying them. So I set one last deadline: December. End of this year. Pay off these medical bills, save some money, revamp your resume. Then get TF. Out. Of. There.

While all of this was happening, I was also writing, sensitivity reading, and creative producing on the weekends and after work hours, which was what I really wanted to be doing more of and brought me a lot of joy. But freelancing was super unstable. Editors would respond late (understandble to a degree), invoices were sometimes paid late (never okay), and writing increasingly became more of a job than a hobby. This development meant I became even more perfectionist and particular about my words, which resulted in me hardly ever publishing anything which meant I couldn’t get paid by editors. And I never had any time to myself to simply rot in bed and do nothing. Contrary to what I thought and expected of myself, I couldn’t do it all. Which was why after the second issue of this newsletter, you heard nothing from me. Not only did I not have a lot of time to write for Transcendent, I simply was so fucking tired. Even when I did have time, the last thing I wanted to do was write. There’s something to be said about how the joy of writing can only be sustained by having the financial support to write. How can I prioritize writing when I work a whole separate job that takes up most of my waking hours? The artist who suffers in misery and the successful artist with a prolific body of work are not synonymous.

Earlier this month, I was let go from my job. It came as a shock. What felt like an increasingly difficult marathon to keep up, suddenly felt like someone had kicked my legs out from under me and told me the race was over. I was finished. I was a little upset, not because I wanted to keep the job, but because I didn’t get a chance to leave on my own terms. Most of all though? I was so damn relieved.

So much of the experience of being young, having recently graduated, and finally starting your career is being unable to stop comparing yourself to people your age around you. You feel like you’re competing against your peers…for what? What is the golden prize at the end? Money? Someone’s always going to be wealthier than you. Stability? Not in this economy for this generation. You’re lying to yourself. Social status? Are we still in high school and obsessed with the concept of popularity and social media likes? The perception of success? Yes! Oh that’s the prize. I get it now.

The takeaway here is we should all be supporting and uplifting each other, relying on community, and maybe be a lot more honest about the realities we’re living in (the bad and the good). I won’t be willfully obtuse and say none of the above things have a material effect on our lives, because they do. I’d like to have enough money to live a life I enjoy and support my family at the same time. I’d like to have stability and not have to worry about the next time I can afford to put food on the table or not have to weigh whether going out to eat once in a while is within my means. I’d like to be respected and well-liked by my peers. But I want none of these things if they come at the expense of the overall quality of my life and mental health.

I’m unashamed to share all of this publicly. Anyone can think of me however they want: this A+ student who’s always done well in school, who’s so well-spoken, who worked so hard, but not very smart, got fired? Yes, I did. Turns out when you dread waking up every morning because you despise your job and feel so discontented, it’ll reflect in your work. Something was going to eventually give.

Over a year ago, I wrote a similar essay about the topic of overworking for Joysauce to the tune of BTS. It’s remarkable how hopeful I sounded at the end of that essay. The truth is, around the same time I wrote that essay, I had just started my new job and I was already hating it. My hope was a little bit of a lie I was telling myself, much like the lies many adults told me and you growing up about the guaranteed wealth and fulfillment from living a conventional “safe” life. I’m tired of perpetuating false hopes for the sake of maintaining an image and saving face.

I’m done with the race (for now). Right now? Right now, I’m free.

What’s next for me? First, rest. I deserve it frankly! Second, more work to be honest. I’m officially freelancing full-time and will be for all of 2024. I have no back-up plan. Only a two-weeks severance (which I’m really grateful for). And some freelance sensitivity reading contracts that are almost wrapping up. I continue to pay my family’s bills from the little savings I have and refuse to hand them back to my parents. They aren’t supporting me financially, not because they don’t want to, but because they can’t. I’m all we’ve got.

What will I be doing? A lot of things. I will continue sensitivity reading and editing for my current clients and reaching out to new ones. I will be cold emailing new clients and promoting my other services as well, which includes technical writing, content writing, project management, and paid digital marketing. (If you see me out there doing the promotion cycle, do not ignore me. Help a girl out please and share, lmao!) I will continue to be a contributing writer for Joysauce and hopefully branch out to writing for other media outlets. The instability of the journalism and media industry is no fucking joke though. These pay rates are increasingly laughable from how low they have become!

I’m also going to ramp up my video directing, creative producing, and scripting. I did a little three-part video series for Joysauce earlier this year and it was one of the most fun and rewarding experiences I ever had. Such hard work, but it felt so good to collaborate with a crew to tell stories. I’m already having amazing conversations with the team at Joysauce about doing more video series for them and just videos in general reaching a wider audience. Stay tuned for more news ;)

Lastly, I’m going to be writing this newsletter Transcendent a lot more often. Now that I have more time and my time is my own, I have no excuse. I’ll probably write a separate essay about writing for joy and writing for money though, because this topic is thorny and deserves its own piece. I got some great advice from beauty culture critic

Jessica DeFino

about maintaining consistency with newsletter writing that I plan to really take to heart.

I can’t afford to do any of this, I’m scared as shit, but I’m doing this. Which means I’m sacrificing a potentially higher salary and lifestyle. I’ll likely be working even harder than when I was working at my previous job. If I fail, I fail on my own terms. My reality is incredibly sobering and I don’t make the decision to go freelance lightly. Again, I have no guarantee of financial stability. But neither did I have that guarantee with my old job (clearly!) I am not doing any of this out of any sort of privilege, but rather out of urgent necessity to find a different work and career for myself. Something better suited to the kind of life I want to live.

📰 Some extra reading & watching:

• Gen Z Does Not Dream of Labor (Vox).

• Why Toni Morrison Left Publishing (Lit Hub).

• This NYT review of Molly McGhee’s debut novel Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind about a guy who’s in debt who audits people’s dreams, which just came out and can be bought wherever books are sold.

• After 148 days, Hollywood’s Writer’s Guild of America’s writer’s strike officially ended last month on Sept 27th, 2023! HUGE belated congratulations to all the WGA union writers! Check out the list of, frankly amazing, wins the strikers won. It goes to show what collective labor action can achieve 💪🏼.

• Positive reviews are flooding in for Martin Scorseses’ latest film Killers of the Flower Moon.

• Watch Castlevania: Nocturne, the sequel series to the original hit vampire animated show Castlevania, on Netflix.

• My review of the K-drama action show Moving (Joysauce).

Now that I’m freelancing full-time, this newsletter might look slightly different in the future. You might see me in your inbox more often (knocks on wood). I might also turn on paid subscription options to help support me and my work. Don’t worry though, my weekly essays like this one will continue to remain free.

I will also be adjusting my content strategy and narrow my niche a bit; writing about all forms of writing and writers might be too broad at the start. I don’t know what I was thinking lol. I might focus on novelists first, my favorite type of writer 😌. Who knows? But that’s what makes this newsletter — and my new work life exciting. The possibilities are endless! I’m smiling ear to ear about the hard work to come, which is a first. I hope you continue to join me for the ride (:

Next week: our first interview with a published author on Transcendent! (For real this time).

Have a great Halloween weekend! 🎃

Teresa