I’m always a bit amused when people think that between being a freelancer and having a regular 9-5 job, freelancing is the easier option. “I’ve never met a stressed freelancer,” someone said to me the other day and I had to bite my lip from responding and saying something snarky in return.
Because in my experience, and I know hundreds (maybe thousands) of freelancers from around the world, I’ve never met a freelancer who isn’t stressed.
I was thinking about it this morning as I sat sipping my tea, reading an email exchange between my source and my editor. The source, through no fault of his own, will not be able to participate in the profile of him and his nonprofit (legal reasons) and had to cancel last minute. The editor, through no fault of his own, has had to kill this assignment and has promised to make it up to me with more work. And I, having spent at least three hours on this piece, researching the subject, his company, writing questions, chalking out a time for a meeting, etc, through no fault of my own, am now suddenly $500 short this month because this assignment is not going through. I’d scheduled for it, of course, which meant that I hadn’t given the time I blocked out for this assignment to something else. Now I’m looking for something else.
There is no one to blame in this situation, let me make that clear. My editor, who is one of my favorite editors, has promised to send more work my way as soon as he can and the source was wonderful about the whole thing, apologizing profusely, even writing to my editor to apologize and explain things so that I wouldn’t have to. It’s just one of those unfortunate situations where something goes wrong for some reason and everyone suffers. The editor will have to struggle to fill that space with something else, the source will no longer be able to get that publicity he so wanted for his non-profit. But the financial loss? Well, that’s mine alone.
Welcome to the world of freelancing. What’s there to be stressed about? What, indeed.