Ready or not, here I come
Where were you in 2013?
If you’re in the same age bracket I am, you were either a student or a recent graduate during the last financial and economic crisis.
Remember how we were told by experts that it’d be better to tack on an extra study year, or to take a gap year volunteering and working abroad? Because it would be hard to find a job, yes, but also because graduates who enter the job market during a recession tend to have lower salaries even years down the road.
That was almost eight years ago, but it seems like yesterday. It feels like a sucker punch to have to go through this again, just as I’m finding my freelancing feet.
I’m not looking forward to the next few months. I doubt anyone is. But as a creative freelancer, I do feel more confident going into this recession than I did the last time round.
As counterintuitive as it may sound, I feel more protected than my salaried friends.
Why? Because, as a creative freelancer, I can adjust course in a way that a salaried employee just can’t, something I wrote a piece about for Underpinned.
For instance, as soon as the lockdown measures were introduced, I thought about which clients might still have assignments for me and reached out to four of them. This landed me three new assignments.
When I got the project brief for one of those assignments, I suggested a couple changes that expanded the scope of the assignment, and thus my fee.
And even though I have my hands full with work at the moment, I’m still planting seeds for the future. I’ve set myself a target of sending out at least one pitch and reaching out to one prospective client every week.
None of this is to say that I expect I will breeze through the coming recession. All my work might still dry up; I’m well aware of that. My point is simply that as freelancers we do have one big advantage – we can go where the money is.
If a few months from now, I find myself overwhelmed by financial insecurity or unable to make a reasonable income, I will adjust course again.
And that brings me back to the last recession. I had one prospective client when I became a freelancer in 2013. Just one. I survived my first year because I took several smaller jobs. I knew fully well that I would never earn a reasonable income just off freelance journalism. So I worked as a subtitler, a cashier and even an event waiter. Even though I managed to secure a steady, freelance journalism gig in my second year, I continued subtitling and also took on a small, less-than-part-time contract as a translator.
This meant that some days, I would leave the house at 8:45 to go to my journalism gig just outside of Brussels, grab the train back to the city around 15:00, clock in a five-hour subtitling shift and get home around 21:30. On the weekends, I often would work on the translation assignments I wasn’t able to finish during the week.
It’s not a period I look back on fondly. And I don’t romanticise it as my “hustling” period either. Instead, I see it for what it was – something I needed to do to be able to continue freelancing.
So, yeah, if I have to, I’ll look for a new side gig. I doubt anyone needs my permission, but you should have zero shame about taking a non-creative side job as a freelancer, or taking on assignments that you would otherwise say ‘no’ to. Let’s all just do what we need to do to survive and take it from there. Yes?
Stay safe,
Linda
What I’m reading, watching, listening to this week:
- This Study Hall look at the measures adopted by various European countries to help freelancers.
- Thoroughly enjoyed this Twitter peek into a Chicago couple’s date night.
- For those of you looking to get a few extra skills under their belt during this period, know that General Assembly has a Free Friday thing going on. A lot of the courses are tech-y, but it’s worth having a look whether something might appeal to you. I’ve seen several modules that focused on softer skills like networking, public speaking and creative thinking in the past few weeks.
What our readers are saying:
“I've only recently started using the pomodoro technique and am genuinely amazed by the difference it makes to focus and efficiency. Love me a good list, too, daily and weekly - makes me more conscious of which tasks are repeatedly being put on the back burner and could safely be dropped altogether, freeing up some headspace. Conversely, which tasks I just need to get on with and get done. Bzzz, that's my five minutes up!” Freelance editor and writer Sally Tipper
“Totally agree! I'm always pomodoro-ing too! It especially works for the dreaded transcribing...if a task is really hard I sometimes start with only five minutes...I literally couldn't function without my little chunks of time now :) ” Journalist Karen McHugh
This newsletter was written by Linda A. Thompson, a Belgian freelance journalist specialised in covering corporate tax and social injustice. She’s written for Bloomberg Law, Deutsche Welle, OZY, International Politics & Society, USA Today and Equal Times.
You’ll hear from Selma Franssen in two weeks. Selma is a Dutch freelance journalist living in Brussels. She is the author of Vriendschap in tijden van eenzaamheid and has written for Charlie Magazine, OneWorld, De Morgen, De Standaard, The New Statesman, Bustle, Knack, VPRO, & Newsweek.