For Love and/or Money

Until recently, I've had the luxury in my relatively short career of saying, "Don't write for free." For a while, especially the past few years I've spent as a full-time freelance journalist, it actually transformed into a bit of a compulsion: I couldn't seem to get it up to write for love if I couldn't also do it for money.

But lately I've felt that shifting, and I think now is the time to seize that feeling before it fades and I become a completely ruthless mercenary again. I've been having ideas about things I'd like to write about that either don't really fit into the format or length of a piece I'd pitch to an editor at one of my outlets, or it seems like a topic from which I probably shouldn't seek profit. Still, especially over the past few months, these ideas — which maybe earlier on in my career I might have just written down for later and eventually deleted for lack of a paid solution — have begun seeming too important to simply forget about.

So, I think I'm gonna start blogging. It's probably not going to be a whole lot, or very often, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to use this space to talk about things people close to me ask me about, like ally resources and moral support, as well as little tips and life hacks I think even people who like me just all right might be able to benefit from. As I write this, my (very, very delayed) flight looks like it's going to be boarding soon, so I'll leave it there for now, but please feel free to let me know if there's anything you'd like to see me cover (please keep it limited to topics that don't require too much research for me — I'm still not totally comfortable with not getting paid for this). Till next time.