Jumping off the high dive: Freelancing the first year

A cute article from the Freelancers Union caught my attention this morning: This freelancer threw herself a company party and you should, too.

It’s a little too cute — I can’t quite get behind giving myself a speech or a team-bonding activity with just me. But I can definitely get behind the happy hour.

In all seriousness, somehow the one-year anniversary of establishing Donald Media as my freelance company kind of slipped my attention. July 27, 2018 was the day I packed up my desk at the newspaper where I had worked for 18 of my 21 years as a journalist, took a couple of pictures of the silent newsroom and left my key card under the door of the human resources office. I was working the night shift that month, so there wasn’t a cheering crowd when I walked out that night — we’d had our cupcake celebration a day before, but three of my colleagues had to miss it to cover a Trump rally.

The door closed behind me as I left, and I heard it lock behind me.

I’d been planning for a year, and launched my freelance site more than a month beforehand when I announced my impending departure and launched a Patreon, which was my first freelance endeavor.

It’s funny — a lot of the things they tell you to do when you go freelance were impossible for me. I could not begin freelancing on the side to build up a client base while I was still at the newspaper, because it would have been a violation of my terms of employment to write for…