Notes of a Freelancer

To anyone who doesn’t know me very well, or maybe even to people who have known me for a while, my recent change in employment arrangement might come as a surprise. For five years I’ve been working in book publishing, never sure exactly of what the long-term goal would be but nonetheless working towards it. Due to the meltdown that the media industry finds itself in right now, the opportunity arose for me to work out a new arrangement—basically that I could cut my responsibilities in half and do most of the work from home. I jumped at the opportunity. Someone else would have seen this as a demotion.

For almost a year now, and even more than that if you count the periodic slumps, I have hated working in an office. Hated having to be at work when there was nothing pressing to do, hated the circumstantial friendships that are extremely intense until the moment someone gets a new job, hated the commute, hated spending so much time in front of a computer screen, hated missing all the yoga classes I wanted to take, hated doing everything I need to do during the evenings and weekends. I’m young; I imagine that one day I’ll probably be back in an office and will find a way to reconcile these little points of contempt, but for the time being, I’m going to pretend that being a freelancer will solve all my problems.

I’ve had many, many elaborate notions of what exactly it would mean for me to be a freelancer. First of all, I would get a fun freelancer haircut. Second, I’d need a new computer, preferably a MacBook Pro that I could drape in stickers. Third, I would do yoga three times a day. Fourth, I would refer to my backpack as my “portable office.” Fifth, I would be able to cancel any plans that I was feeling hesitant about by saying, “I’m really sorry, but this project just came up, and the deadline is tomorrow.” And lastly, I could forever affect bewilderment at how my day-jobbing friends manage to do the 9-to-5 thing while keeping their sanity. I’ve followed through with much of this already, save the stickers and the haircut and the canceling plans (see below).

Since the freelance arrangement alone is not enough money, my next concern was finding a job to supplement that income. I’ve talked about my culinary aspirations here before—I had thought that I would go work in a kitchen; I reconnected the chef I worked for, and it seemed like that was feasible. Well, something else happened (because now that I am a freelancer my life is an open book, and you gotta take the opportunities as they come), which is that I got a job as a host at a charming mid-rate restaurant for old people on the Upper East Side. While I’ve long wanted to try this type of work—partly because restaurant work interests me, and partly because I have a friend who works four nights a week as a waiter and has always made at least $20K (annually) more than me—what this really means is that though I can’t get the fun freelancer haircut I was hoping for, I am being paid to be nice and look good during restaurant hours, and that is a wonderful challenge for me. Plus, the old people love me.

A few notes from my first few weeks as a freelancer: I had a moment of unfiltered joy on Tuesday, coming back from a 7:30 AM yoga class and finally being on one of the trains going in the opposite direction of all the commuters. At the yoga studio they must think I’m unemployed and depressed, because they never see me showered or shaved anymore. I have worn the same sweatshirt and jeans every day for about two weeks. I am not cooking as much as I thought I would because it’s easier to eat chips and hummus and scrambled eggs. I’m also not leaving the house a lot because it is cold outside. I’m spending more time in front of the computer than before (check out all the activity on my Tumblr account), which is embarrassing. No one is ever free to hang out, especially now that I work several evenings a week. In fact, while motivation per se is not a challenge, there is an adjustment to be reckoned with. There is something yogic I could say here, about purpose and fulfillment and “work” in the figurative sense. I will give that some thought this afternoon.