A writer's difficult choice: security or freedom?
By David Masello, Globe Correspondent, 8/22/04
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Illustration/Anthony Schultz |
After years of being a freelance writer, I took a job as an editor at a magazine. Two weeks before starting my new job, I went to an inn in the Berkshires for what I considered the last rites for a lost way of life.
I was determined on the trip to do all of the things a person is supposed to do on a Berkshires vacation -- ride a mountain bike, pack a picnic dinner for a Tanglewood concert, feel the full buffet of the wind atop Mount Greylock.
I also attended a production of Shaw's ''Heartbreak House'' at the Berkshires Theatre Festival in Stockbridge. During the performance, one character said of another that he is the wrong person to consult about life because he spends his days in an office, away from experience. The moment I heard that sentiment uttered on stage, I fought the urge to run down to the lobby to call my future boss and tell her I had made a mistake.
I've always been pulled between the desire to be a free agent and the need for some kind of job security. Years ago, when I was a staff editor at a magazine, I attended dinner at a restaurant with several friends and acquaintances, all of whom made a life for themselves outside of an office. One was a portrait painter who spent six months each in Paris and New York. Another was a photographer employed by opera companies around the world to shoot productions. A third worked as a set designer for Broadway and West End shows.
I yearned for their daily freedom, for the chance to linger at the table past midnight and order another drink without having to worry about getting up early for the office.
Although each of them complained of the anxieties of having to find new work and maintain cash flow, I knew that I would embrace such a life.
In fact, I had worked as a freelance writer for a two-year period when I was in my mid-20s. I had left a good job as a book editor because I wanted to try out life on the other side of the desk. Instead of being an editor helping a writer, I wanted to be that writer.
I quickly discovered that it was too early in my career to go freelance. I had few professional contacts at that point and didn't even yet know what I wanted to write about. Every night, I would pace the roof of my apartment building wondering what to do, how to fill the next day.
I was saved by the offer of a magazine job that took me, over the years, on assignments to Morocco, the Caribbean, Paris, London, Rome. But as time passed, I again craved that feeling of working in a freewheeling fashion, of not knowing what job or experience would come next, of being able to spend every morning writing and seeing where the activity led me.
The way we live our life as children and teenagers is, often, the way we will always live it. I always worked as a teenager and throughout college. Rather than take a full-time job as a clerk or a waiter, as many of my friends did, I chose instead to work as a handyman for neighbors. I had keys to entire blocks of houses in my suburban neighborhood. I mowed lawns, cleaned gutters, washed cars, painted the occasional closet or bedroom. In winters, I shoveled walks, sprinkled salt, installed storm windows, and spread miles of caulk along windowsills to keep out drafts.
I was always free to make my own hours, to seek out new employers. And I thrived. I made good money. I had experiences. Of course, back then, I didn't need to pay rent and health insurance premiums. If work fell off, there was little worry. The neighbors, it seemed, always had another task for me.
On this current freelance run, I have made a living as a writer and editor outside of an office for the last eight years. And there hasn't been a night when I don't open the window of my apartment and lean out to look at the city skyline and say, ''I'm still here, still doing it. I'm my own boss.''
However, with the recent loss of a regular editing project that represented nearly half my income, I decided to accept a good job offer at a major magazine. At my age, too, I thought, such offers won't come often. But before making the decision to accept the job, I spent many nights pacing the living room floor, watching lights in the neighboring buildings go out, wondering what it would mean to give up my freedom for a security that also felt like a form of confinement.
The end of my freelance life is a realization that some of the things I wanted to do, and expected to do during this time, didn't happen. The books I imagined writing didn't materialize. The idea of a newspaper hiring me to pen a thoughtful weekly essay about a topic of my choosing remained a fantasy. A trip to Japan, a cross-country drive with a goal to visit old college friends along the way -- these things didn't take place. I was always reluctant to leave the city for fear that I would miss new work. And without work on the horizon, I would worry about spending money. When work arrived, it would consume me and I wasn't able to travel. Freelance life has constraints, too.
I did, however, write every morning -- essays, poems, the occasional short story. I will miss that time in the morning where I was free to think on a page.
But I also know my work history. Ironically, when I have been employed full time in an office, the kind of personal writing I most wish to do happens. Not having enough time to write means using what time there is to write well. I won't have entire mornings to ponder a piece of writing, but rather a few minutes before leaving for the office. That will have to be my most productive time.
And, I need to remember those hours of inertia that can hit mid-afternoon when there isn't enough work or inspiration available at home. In an office, I'll be insulated from those anxieties as I stay busy throughout the day, in the company of colleagues, doing work I know how to do.
This I know and accept -- at least for awhile.
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