I almost never take on an assignment without asking for a higher rate. Sometimes this results in securing a higher rate. Other times it doesn’t. But the ask never works against me. No matter what, it’s worth trying. I’ve been making at least some of my living as a freelancer…

And a lesson on respect Afew years ago, I began using my whole name professionally. This decision was partly strategic. The dominant culture was beginning to engage questions of diverse representation and identity, and though these questions had always been prevalent in both my work and life, I felt it…

I’ve written several posts on this website that hint at my preoccupation with communication best practices—in crises and in general—and the dark art of inbox maintenance. Maybe it’s my severely hampered executive functioning capability, or maybe it’s just one of those sensitivities a person gets after a decade and change…

I’m writing this less than a week after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, a geopolitical calamity that’s hitting unexpectedly close to home: The remote team my partner leads at work now has multiple members living under active bombardment. …

Chances are that if you know me IRL, you’ve gotten wind of my borderline obsession with internet rabbit holes. It may not come as much of a surprise, then, that I often self-soothe by scrolling Reddit. I follow a very large, super random assortment of subreddits (for all the non-Redd…

A few years ago, a snapshot of author Ursula K. LeGuin’s writing schedule surfaced on Twitter after an anthology was published of her collected interviews. As the tweet went viral, I noticed two recurring themes in people’s reactions. One, a kind of reverent admiration for the late sci-fi master’s endearingly…

In 2019, the writer and actress Tavi Gevinson confessed in New York mag that she was no longer using Instagram. Sure, her public-facing profile was still actively posting to the platform as was professionally required of her. …

An OOO isn’t just about availability. It’s a boundary — Today was the last official day of a nearly two-week vacation I’d been planning for several months. When you’re self-employed, ‘vacation’ is about a thousand percent more difficult to pull off than when you have a salary and PTO. Partly this is because self-employment means you’re in charge of administering…

Scrolling my phone before I get out of bed Checking email before I have at least half a cup of coffee Eating breakfast standing up Eating breakfast sitting down, while working Working without a midday break Letting the day get dark without going outside first Letting the day get dark…