Burn Notice
Admitting that a vacation is not enough, the business of freelance journalism is very broken, and I am burned out
I have been playing whack-a-mole with an existential writing crisis for months. There are weeks when his buck-tooth face remains hidden. And then—pop-pop-pop!—he taunts me for days and I chase him back into the ground, wondering where and when he’s going to resurface.
The first time I said the words out loud—maybe I don’t want to be a writer anymore—I struggled to swallow as my throat started to close and my whole body gripped in tightness. My friend looked at me with such kindness, such compassion and said nope, look how your body just responded. That’s not the answer.
Writing is the closest thing I have had to a calling. In the first grade I told Sister Agnes I was going to be a writer. By the eighth grade, I had chosen journalism as my particular form of writing. In high school, I landed my first paid freelance gig (wait for it) covering town planning board meetings for our itsy-bitsy local paper. This was a job more boring than raw dogging your flight,1 had absolutely no mentorship, no room for growth, and a paycheck that couldn’t even cover a Columbia House CD subscription. This was a job that should have killed any calling anyone had for anything. Ever. Dead.
And yet. I slogged through zoning variance requests, farmland and water studies, and capital county review budgets.2 My calling confirmed, I pressed forward, went to college—and, of course, worked at the student-run newspaper and interned anywhere people needed coffee—and spent a few years on staff at a national magazine and then a national newspaper.
In the early aughts I had the perfect combination of experience, naïveté, and health insurance3 to start freelancing full time. Yes, it was hard—grueling and financially terrifying in the beginning. And, yes, I dealt with my fair share of bad editors, stolen story ideas, and uninspiring assignments that paid the bills—listicles, ghost writing books,4 and even government white papers. I also learned to be my own tech support, sales team, and collection agency.5
But honestly, I share that only to remind you that every job has its bad parts. Because mostly it’s been a fucking blast6 with wild adventures and fascinating people. I went on a stakeout of a former vaudeville star, got my New York accent parodied on SNL, went race car driving, tried uphill skiing,7 and trekked into the Alps to watch cows wrestle. I shopped the Paris pharmacies, toured Rome by Vespa, and got an up-close tour of the world’s largest particle accelerator (the thing that discovered the “God particle”). More importantly, I have been able to tell other people’s stories—interviews with Mike Wallace and a pre-Harry Meghan Markle remain highlights—and have met the most incredible, life-changing people.8
It is far more than my seventeen-year-old self could have imagined while slogging through updates to Campbell Hall’s sewer system expansion project. And it’s been a lot of work. Reading about Simone Biles two-year break during the Olympics this summer, I paused to think about the time I’ve taken off. And I realized, since I started freelancing full time in 2003, I have taken just two weeks off for our honeymoon and, more recently, we’ve been taking two-week summer vacations. I didn’t even take maternity leave. This is not a badge of honor. It’s fucked up. And it’s one ingredient for burnout.
Burnout has been well studied. And some of the other ingredients speak to the shifts in the business of freelance journalism9 and the problems that have arisen. The pay—typically on a per-word rate10 and, as with most independent contractors, no benefits—has not changed in the last twenty years. The flexibility and control has, but not for the better. More and more contracts are work-made-for-hire agreements, which means the publication owns and can re-sell, license, and profit from the work, not the writer.11 And, some publications have freelance writers sign codes of ethics that dictate their behavior at other publications—something that must be legally questionable in terms of the independent contractor vs employee classification.
While all of this may seem like very in-the-weeds details for a wellness newsletter, these factors all relate to issues of burnout such as perceived lack of control, lack of intrinsic and extrinsic reward, lack of fairness, values mismatch, and poor sense of collaboration and community.
I don’t have answers for most of this. Or I do, but adding to my feelings of burnout, I have no control or ability to affect meaningful change in any of it. There is one thing I can change, one thing I can do. In response to Biles' time off and then triumphant return, I recently wrote, “rest is not weakness, success requires asking for help, and tending to our inner lives matters.” Maybe it’s time I take my own advice.
Here’s what I know: I am not the thing I do for a living. I am not a writer. I am a human being. And right now, I need to lean into more of the human and the being part of my existence. I will still write. It is still my calling. I will even still write here. But I am going to take a little break and release any pressure to conform to a rigorous publishing schedule until further notice. (I will be pausing paid subscriptions for now and issuing a pro-rated refund to paid subscribers over the next week.)
And I hope you will keep reading, here and elsewhere. I value this community and what we are creating. I just know that I can't keep creating it on a weekly basis, at least for now.
Putting down the mallet,
Kelly
C'mon Gen Z. Also, even that name is more interesting than town planning board meeting reporter. I started to fall asleep typing that.
I think. This was 30 years ago. I could just be stringing a list of words I kinda remember together. Fact check me, betches.
HIINO—health insurance in name only—to appease my dad. For $85 a month—a fortune—they'd peel me off the sidewalk a few days later if I got hit by a truck. Thank god for Planned Parenthood.
The men's grooming book I ghost wrote remains one of the strangest projects I've ever done.
Very Carrie Bradshaw.😉
I told you I had a penchant for Roy-Kentian language.
Gift link
👋 Michele. 👋 JP
Please note, I wrote the business of freelance journalism, not problems with journalism. I believe strongly in the tenets and craft of journalism. I deeply admire the work actual and real journalists are doing out there. Do not mistake this for some fake news bullshit. Fake news is a red herring propagated on fear and fanned by the appalling lack of media literacy in this country.
Magazines typically pay $1-$3/word. Good newspapers pay .50 cents to $1/word. Web sites pay less. A lot less. And lots of places want to pay you a flat rate of $100-$300 for 1,000 word story or less in visibility.
So if the author of the fascinating story you just read didn't read their contract closely enough and didn't fight for their rights, they don’t own their research, reporting, or writing. And they definitely won't profit when the publication sells the rights to Netflix. In other words, the magazine or the newspaper might be the one making all of Netflix-sized money on the journalist's work.
So incredibly proud of you. Here's to more space and grace...
Kelly- I feel your pain. You are not alone in this. Lots of jobs are going away and new ones are being created.
Sometimes rest is the healthiest thing we can do ! Learning how to slow down is even better. Hugs to you.