time management – Natalie Burg

May 17, 2016May 19, 2016Self-Employment

Spending your (time) lotto winnings

For about three minutes today, I fantasized about how I would spend $429.6 million in lotto winnings. Then I realized that since my thrilling character combination of being both super cheap and strongly analytical has prevented me from ever having purchased a lottery ticket, these were three minutes sorely wasted. Besides, once you are a legit adult, don’t you have to subscribe to that boring windfall rule of 1/3 toward debt, invest 1/3 and just 1/3 for splurging? Zzzzzz…

All this happened just moments before winning my own brand of lottery.

February 9, 2016February 10, 2016Self-Employment Writing

In which a professional writer asks, “I actually have to write during working hours? Whaaaaa?”

Writing between the hours of 9 and 5 is really difficult for me. And it’s taken me six years as a professional, full-time writer to recognize that it’s sort of a problem.

How it has always worked before is that I spent the almighty Designated Working Hours doing all of the writing tasks that are not writing: emailing, scheduling interviews, conducting interviews, editing, researching, invoicing, etc., etc. Actual writing was reserved for the couch, after hours or on the weekends. So that’s what I did.

May 23, 2015May 22, 2015Self-Employment Writing

A Time for Big Ideas: Freelancing & the 3-day weekend

Having grown up in a small tourist town in Northern Michigan, Memorial Day weekend has always been a different experience for me and mine. Tawasians don’t leave town for three-day weekends. Not only are we already in the kind of place most of the country is escaping to, but often, we work on Memorial Day. A town can’t close down when half the state is visiting. Plus, there’s invariably some parade of indiscernible tone happening that you have to be in or organize or attend.