BREAKING: Philly Freelancers Drink Good Coffee
Our first question comes quick: What are you doing in a Wash Sq West coffee shop unless you make $85,000 a year? We already don’t like the sound coming out of your mouth. Rachel Buchman’s (she of a sordid Dragonfire and WHYY past) latest piece in the Inky’s Currents section tries to nail all freelancers into a generalizing coffin:
Freelancing also allows those of us not located in the Google-rific world of office skate parks and laptop-friendly cafeterias to work in our pajamas with clients we like at 3 a.m. at a bar, park or coffee shop. We aren’t chained to our desks or roped to our neckties.
You don’t say! What about the rest of us who are chained to 16 different side jobs so that freelancing is even an option? Or those of us who don’t work in our pajamas, because we’ve already gotten dressed and have been hustling all morning so that we could afford coffee. From Wawa. We don’t even remember health insurance; to us, that’s like cheating. Jot this down since you have the time: Freelancing is not for the weak.
March 5th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Amen. Though it is cheaper to make your own coffee (sorry Wawa). That Pilon stuff in Superfresh’s international food aisle ain’t half bad.
March 5th, 2007 at 5:07 pm
Is Washington Square somewhere near the Dunkin Donuts on Aramingo?
March 5th, 2007 at 5:21 pm
I make my own coffee, too, to save money so I can put it back into my freelancing business — because that’s what I do. I run a business, not piddle around and write about what my friends think and try to pass it off as journalism.
It’s a shame that the Inquirer allowed someone with just a month’s freelance experience to blather on about what our lives are supposedly like. That’s not my life, and it’s not the life of any freelance writer I know. But given her supposeded “work ethic,” I doubt she’ll be a freelance writer much longer. Because it takes, you know, actual work.
March 5th, 2007 at 5:28 pm
“work in our pajamas with clients we like at 3 a.m”
Isn’t that a different kind of freelancing?
March 5th, 2007 at 6:48 pm
Freelance: The toughest job you’ll ever love. For real, yo. What if I had to wear nylons? Ick.
March 6th, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Philadelphia Business Privilege Tax and paying federal and state quarterly taxes.
Nuff’ Said
March 12th, 2007 at 9:07 am
i’ve done a lot of freelance, which is why i bartend