Category: Writer

I love coming up with story ideas. I love pitching those ideas. I love talking to people, and I love writing. I also love the creative process in which I do all that, and I find doing it autonomously, all of those tasks, makes them more enjoyable. I write what I want when I want and for whom I want.

What I want lawmakers to know: I imagine you’re trying to help people who are being taken advantage of, but I’m not one of them. There has to be a way to let me keep what I’ve worked so long and hard to create, and for you to help the people you want to help.

I’ve been happy. I’ve loved my life and my career. And I’ve worked hard, really hard, to get where I am today in my career. I don’t want to lose all that. I’m older than 50, and the chance of a newspaper or magazine hiring me as a full-time employee, particularly given the state of my industry, is very small. I’d have to learn a new career at this stage of my life and not do the thing I love.

Please, don’t do this.

On April Fools Day in 2011, I got the call that no one wants to get: The lump in my left breast was cancer.

I had a 10-year-old daughter, a loving husband, and a beautiful life. For more than a year of that life, I dealt with surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation, Herceptin treatments, and recovery to remove the cancer we could see and kill that which we could not.

Fortunately, I had begun working as a freelance writer and editor in 2002, after my daughter was born. Over the years, I grew my business to more than a dozen clients who gave me regular work that I do in my home office. I could work on a story about veterans who became entrepreneurs in the morning and take my daughter to soccer practice in the afternoon. I had the flexibility to make every school concert and basketball tournament and was still able to work for some of the most well-known publishers in the world. My income was and is significantly higher than what I could earn working full-time as a writer and editor.

While it’s true that my husband—an independent real estate appraiser—and I had to purchase our own health insurance, the benefits of self-employment far outweighed that fact. I was able to tailor my work schedule around my treatments and surgeries. When I felt good, I wanted to work. It was a wonderful distraction and made me feel like more than just “a cancer patient.” It didn’t matter that I didn’t have hair or couldn’t be exposed to crowds because of my chemo-weakened immune system during treatment or for weeks afterward. (The photo accompanying this story is of me a few months after my hair started to grow back.)

Freelancing gave me the freedom I needed to get better and support my family. I could do interviews and write stories remotely and only when I wanted to do so, picking and choosing to work when I felt like it. Had I been working as an employee in an office, I would not have had that flexibility and would likely have had to take unpaid leave during the course of at least some of my treatment, hurting my family’s income.

I hope that the legislators will allow freelancers like me to continue to work!

After graduating college, it never occurred to me that some day I would be self-employed and loving it. I wrote for my college newspaper, but found a full-time job after graduation investigating medical malpractice cases for an insurance company. Later, I was a project manager at a health-care technology start-up. I was paid every two weeks like clockwork, and got health and dental insurance and a company-matched retirement plan. Pregnant with my daughter, I quit my job, and my husband and I moved across the country for his work. I learned that it’s hard to find a job when you’re six months pregnant.

Everyone says to sleep when the baby sleeps, but I was itching to earn some money and I missed the intellectual stimulation work provides. During nap time, I wrote occasional articles for local business papers, and then travel articles for newspapers across the country. The internet made working from home possible.

Two years later, my son was born and I continued adding to my portfolio. It was the early days of blogging, and to learn something new, I started my own blog about family-friendly things to do in the area, founding one of the first local parenting blogs. I sold advertising, joined affiliate marketing programs, and learned about search engine optimization. Not only did my blog bring in advertising income, but other companies hired me to write for their blogs. Suddenly this stay-at-home mom was able to pay for family vacations and contribute to the kids’ college funds.

As my kids started preschool and then elementary school, my writing time expanded. My insurance and medical background was a great bridge to writing about those industries. At some point, my income exceeded the salary I earned at my last full-time job, even though I was working part-time during school hours.

My kids are now in high school and college, and my career growth tracked with their growth. I’ve been referred for jobs that would require me to go into an office. I don’t want to commute, but at this point in my life, I also don’t want to be an employee. I value the freedom of working for myself. In the past few years, my income exceeded what I thought was possible for a freelancer writer. While I still have a 401(k) from my full-time employee years, I’ve been contributing each year to an individual 401(k). I love my work, and I love being self-employed.

As a work-at-home mom, I walked my kids to and from school for seven years, until they were in middle school and walking them to school was no longer socially acceptable (to them). I’ve been room parent more times than I can count, planning Valentine’s Day and end-of-year parties. I never needed to ask my employer for time off for school field trips or the Halloween parade. As the parent robotics coach for our high school teams, I go to after-school meetings multiple times a month, because I work from home and control my schedule. I don’t have to ration my vacation days to see if I have enough for religious holidays, spring break and a summer vacation. Instead, I take six to seven weeks off a year, and don’t worry about finding backup to watch my kids on their days off or figure out who will stay home with them when they’re sick. My kids know that when they walk in the door after school, I stop working so we can talk about their days. My son actually thanked me multiple times for being there for him after school. Not all parents have this luxury, and I do not take it for granted.  

My income and work flexibility allow me to provide for my family and still be there for my kids. If I wanted the benefits an employed status provided, I would get a job with those benefits. Forcing companies to hire me as a part-time employee would lower my income because they’d have to pay additional taxes and the overhead that goes with employment. I would either get paid less or, more likely, they would no longer use my services. As an employee, I would likely have to sign a non-compete agreement, which would limit my income as well, since I write for multiple companies and publications within the same niches.

I’m asking that New Jersey support its independent contractors who want to continue working in this model, and let work-at-home parents continue contributing to our communities and our state.

I’ve been a freelance journalist for about 30 years. I have always enjoyed having my independence. Also, my son has autism; my schedule has allowed me to take him to therapy, pick him up from school when he’s had a meltdown, and take him to see doctors and other programs.

I don’t want to lose clients. I am older than 60, and there’s a lot of ageism in my field. No one will hire me for a full-time, in-office position.

What I want lawmakers to know: Please, consider how anti-independent contractor legislation will hurt freelancers, moms, older freelancers and disabled people.