Freelance Gossip: Q1 Report
Circling HomeWork #44
Me to me (an artist):
It’s been three months since the last day of my traditional day job, so I wanted to share a little first-quarter-as-a-freelancer status update. It’s a pretty long one, so click into your browser or the Substack app if it’s cut off in your inbox. And if you’re an artist making, or who has made, a similar shift, I’d love to hear about your experience. (Seriously — let’s talk! Email me and we can set something up.)
Special Offer
Before getting into today’s report, don’t forget that you have just a few days left to take us up on our end-of-year subscription offer. [Purchase an annual subscription, and receive the second year free!] Read more about it here, as well a couple of our favorite HomeWork issues from this year out from behind the paywall. We would love to have you join us as paid subscriber for the year ahead! Reach out if you have any questions.
Upcoming Events
Our artist admin coworking returns in Brooklyn this Saturday, January 3 and virtually on Saturday, January 17. We’d love to see you there!
Finally, please save the date for the return of our free virtual zine workshop in partnership with CreativeMornings, coming up on Tuesday, February 10. We’ll be sure to share the registration link with you as soon as we have it.
After thinking about it for a long time and a slow off-ramp which included a few extra months of part-time work while the museum re-hired position, I’ve now been on my own schedule for close to three months. I’m building the road as I go, with the goal of getting to some sort of financial stasis in 2026. I have some savings helping to buoy me in the interim, but definitely feel the clock ticking on getting this all to work out. For this first year, I wanted to document the process in some way – here’s a “quarterly report” on the first few months that I’ve been on my own. I hope to have more to share in another three months, and on from there – we’ll see! I’m writing this in real time, so I’m not quite sure where exactly things will land.
My plan is to focus on three main areas: Firstly, building up a freelance book of business focused on event planning and production, or related project management, primarily for creative organizations and individuals. Next, deepening and further developing my art practice and working toward putting my art in front of more people – not just drawings, but my own events and facilitation work as well. And finally, putting more energy into Circling as we head into year three of this project and have lots of ideas!
For today, I’ll outline some shifts I made personally and professional as I prepared for the last day of my job and in the few months since then, as well where I’m going from here as we enter 2026.
Adapting in the personal realm
Prior to the last day at my job, I prepared in the following areas:
Finances: Put extra into savings where I could, and also tried to pre-pay for as much as possible while I still had a regular income — I knew we had some family travel coming up in the fall and winter, as well as a residency that I’d been awarded, and so I pre-purchased that travel so I wouldn’t have to do so later on. I also stocked up on consumable home goods which we don’t necessarily purchase every month like toilet paper, tissues, soap and laundry detergent, etc.
Medical: Used up the full amount in my FSA, scheduled doctor appointments and refilled prescriptions prior to changes in health insurance coverage.
Health: The few months working part-time allowed me to take time to rest and recuperate which I really needed after being in a pretty rough place entering 2025. This included laying low and better and more consistent sleep, showing up to softball games and upping the number of yoga classes I was attending per week, and doing slow and calming things like reading long books in physical form.
Around the apartment and “life admin”: Again, with the extra time afforded by a part-time schedule, I worked to catch up on a long list of miscellaneous to-do’s that had piled up and were causing stress, I wanted to set myself up to have fewer distractions and a more comfortable home environment as I shifted into focusing on my own work. This included things like posting unwanted clothing on Poshmark, renewing my passport, filing and sorting papers that had piled up, and hanging things up around the apartment. (Improvements!)
Since then, I have adapted or shifted my routines in the following ways:
