by Rachel Smith
21 July 2014
There was only one mistake in Rachel Smith’s great post on Friday about taking a holiday when work dries up. It stated her freelance mate had lost two long-time regular gigs. It was actually five clients that slipped off my slate. It left me with three gigs, and then came the news that one more was also about to shut up shop.
From eight regular gigs to two in three months sent a decided chill through my career. The fact that no other work or contracts appeared made this toughest of all. I have never faced a period like this in my freelance career – and I have been at it for well over a decade. Work has always just flooded in and as one gig finished, another would appear, without fail for me to not trust the process. Not this time.
Juggling so many gigs – sometimes as many as 14 clients at one time – left little option for any time off throughout the year. Holidays were always a big deal to factor in among a schedule of deadlines. This time, I had little option. No amount of phone calls or emails or coffee meetings with editors was resulting in new work. The pot was dry.
And so I had to consider what to do when work stops. Was it time to take on a bar job, or did I have to just trust a little longer? With a nest egg saved – I call it my ‘parachute money’ in case of a quiet period – it gave me options. But wasn’t that money meant to tide me over rather than see me jumping on a flight to Asia?
I felt such guilt about considering touching it. What about the mortgage and phone bill months in November? Almost two months of no work had given me little faith this work situation was ever going to turn around.
So I took Rachel’s – and numerous other freelance mates – advice and made the most of this quiet period and took a holiday. One wise friend said, “Consider this break an investment in your future – it will give you new oxygen to breathe.”
Landing in Singapore, I felt I could breathe again. Then on day three as I landed in Cambodia, I received an email from an editor with four story assignments. Then another editor sent through two new commissions from pitches of a month before. Then a corporate gig raised its lovely head.
So, that set the tone for my schedule. It became a working holiday – and I had no complaints. I would work in the hotel every morning, completing stories and following up sources by email. Then in the afternoon, I would take off on a tour, lie by the pool with my book or head to sunset cocktails.
It was a reminder that whether I am in Australia or Timbuktu, I can work freelance from anywhere. My editors had no idea I was away from my desk. But I quickly noticed that I seemed to work more effectively. I gave myself half each day to complete the work and then once it was lunchtime, I was on holiday again.
Drinks with a PR mate in Bangkok one night shed new light when he said he had been chatting that day with a mutual freelance journo mate on assignment in New York. “I told her you are here, and she asked if you are now doing what she is doing – travelling the world and just freelancing from wherever you are.”
It sounded like a fine idea, but it no longer seemed like a pipe dream. It was a reality I was actually living, and doing it was working so easily. Breathing that new oxygen was making me consider a whole range of new options. The result of this experiment was the work I completed while I was away paid for the trip, and then some. And as I am also a part-time travel writer, there is a tax-deductible benefit to all this.
But best of all, I came back with a fresh outlook. The good thing is the empty pot is returning to a simmer again. It is not exactly at a smooth boil, but I know it is time to get busy again, rather than waiting for the new jobs just to appear. And I am considering all kinds of ideas, like finally pitching the two TV projects I have been sitting on for years.
Finding a new way to look at what we do, when so much of what we do is spent all alone writing in a corner of our house, has given me a very different perspective. With a laptop and a mobile phone, along with a passport, it feel I now face a world of possibilities. Sometimes a change of location can be all it takes to give us new outlook, and to breathe that fresh oxygen that as freelancers, we need to inspire what we do.
A change of setting – on a budget
1. Budget airlines. Getting to Asia for under $500 return was clean, easy and cheap.
2. Go online. Why a travel agent charged $55 more than a number of travel sites for exactly the same room in Phnom Penh remains a mystery.
3. Call in favours. Hotel PR people were full of generous offers of great media rates and even comp nights.
4. Check out the best sim deals so that receiving and making phone calls does not lead to bill shock. As long as you answer, your editors will never know the difference.
