The fear of a slightly too empty diary
Plus a workshop announcement and some faves from the week
First, a quick bit of news! If your New Year’s Resolution involves writing more, I’m super excited to be hosting a new online workshop for Journo Resources this month: How To Find Adventure In The Everyday (And Write About It). We’ll cover finding adventure outside of big events and grand goals, working out what and how much you want to share in your personal writing and the pros and cons of long-form vs. short-form.
It’s on January 22nd at 5:30pm (UK time) and tickets are £5, with free spaces reserved for anybody to whom cost is a barrier. Let me know if you have any questions as I’d love to see you there!
Hello and happy new year! I’m starting this year in the same way that I start every year: with good intentions. The fridge is full of vegetables and I’m looking forward to not seeing a bottle of Baileys for a while.
It’s the second day of the new year as I write this and I’ve spent it thinking about what exactly my plan is for 2025. Right now, I’m in a place that I’ve been in plenty of times before over the past four years of being self-employed and that is staring straight down the barrel of a slightly too empty diary. (In contrast, I realise, to the fact that I started this post with an event announcement.)
There’s always the pressure when you’re freelance (and probably when you’re not, too) to appear constantly busy. It’s posting on Linkedin about back-to-back events, it’s sending emails saying you’re so sorry for your slow reply but things have just been hectic, it’s making yourself seem as in demand as physically possible. I’m absolutely guilty here - I literally wrote a whole newsletter about a busy work week recently.
But, clearly, I’d be lying if I said that was always the case. Just as often there are periods where maybe a few things have been cancelled and a few more never got confirmed to start with, and there you are looking at the blank spaces in your diary, twiddling your thumbs and praying for the phone to ring.