Today is my seven-year freelance anniversary! That means that it’s been SEVEN YEARS since I took the plunge and became an independent journalist.

On my four-year freelance anniversary, I shared 20 things I learned the hard way—and they’re still just as relevant, especially if you’re looking for tips to stay afloat financially (without losing your sanity). The following year, I wrote about defining success for oneself, and how even unpaid work that feels meaningful can be more fulfilling than high-paying work in odds with your own sense of integrity. Last year, I focused on the underbelly of hard stuff about freelancing that people don’t often talk about.

This year, I’d like to focus on seven things I’m thankful for.

Amazing Clients

When I first started freelancing, I was not at all selective about clients. Over time, I developed pretty stringent standards for the type of people I like to work with. Still, it can be hard to drop high-paying clients offering steady work even when their values don’t align with mine and they’re draining to work with. This year, I finally broke the curse and can say that I truly love every one of my editors and clients.

Editors that have your back when companies push back against accurate reporting are worth their weight in gold. How clients react when you negotiate contracts will tell you everything you need to know about them as people. And, interestingly enough, some of your dream publications may not be all that. Some have poor working conditions, editors that are consistently late with revisions (but don’t change your deadline), unreasonable expectations, toxic power dynamics, and scope creep. Others are everything you’ve ever dreamed of. I’m thrilled with all of mine.

Having clients that you’re super stoked to work with makes all the difference in the world.

Amazing Writers And Sources

I’ve had the opportunity to edit dozens of writers over the years, and am always impressed with their creativity and expertise. And being able to pick people’s brains–whether on the record or on background–has not only improved my work but given me an increased understanding of the world.

Strong Support Networks

Having friends to connect with to discuss freelancing challenges and goals has been invaluable. I have two amazing friends (waving to Elina and Susan) who I connect with regularly over email and we talk about our struggles and our goals. I call them my Jedi Council. With their support, I’ve dropped awful clients, negotiated for better contracts, and gotten a handle on balancing non-work goals while maintaining the quality of my work. They are also quick to offer a bit of tough love if I’m about to make poor choices.

I’ve also connected with local freelancers at various meetups and in my coworking space, over countless Slack and Semaphor channels, and at conferences across the country. And I’ve networked with hackers and privacy experts and some of the smartest minds in the fitness industry over the years, which is a nice job perk.

Whether it’s online, in person, or a combination of the two, finding support outside of harried/overworked editors is crucial.

Making My Own Schedule

For many years, freelancing to me was about staying up until I could barely keep my eyes open—2AM or so—and then waking up and hopping on my laptop before even thinking about breakfast.

But this summer, I realized my health was beginning to suffer from my insane schedule. After an injury kept me from swinging by evening classes at a Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym (as I’d intended to do), I joined an amazing gym and started training three days a week—during prime time. Between the driving and the training and my dilly-dallying, I probably spend 3 hours during the day on each of these days just focused on my own fitness.

The surprising thing for me was that switching from working 60-80 hour weeks to around 40 hasn’t really impacted my income. I’ve also noticed that I’m far more productive during the hours I do work if I’m not burning the candle at both ends. And I don’t mind working a few evening and weekend hours if it means I get to block off time to go to the gym or even attend events during the day.

Freelancing allows us the luxury of making our own schedules—good to take advantage of it!

Apps & Tools

I don’t know where I’d be without Basecamp, my favorite project management tool. Freshbooks is a god-send when it comes to invoicing (and even sending out reminders for past-due payments). Strict Workflow helps keep me on task. I just started using Grammarly, which can be really helpful. And I’m very grateful for free tools (like Privacy Badger, HTTPS Everywhere, Do Not Track, Signal, and even PGP) and paid tools (password managers and VPNs) to help me keep my information secure.

Caring Less

A lot of writers I know don’t read the comments on their posts, which is a shame—sometimes there are corrections in there. In fact, many of the sites I write for have turned off comments since they can be a bit of a cesspool (and since everything’s moving to social media anyway). I’m one of the writers who reads every single comment, and I sometimes even scan Twitter and Facebook and Reddit to see what people are saying. At some point, I stopped caring so much because I ran out of energy to care. (I call it “Better living through exhaustion”.) Now I can look at comments in a more detached, objective way—which is probably a lot healthier.

The Opportunity To Remake Myself

A few years back, I decided to move away from health and fitness writing and towards investigative reporting on technology (specifically, privacy and security). This year, I’m moving a bit back towards fitness. I also decided I wanted to balance heavy-hitting work with stuff that’s less exhausting, including a bit of brand work. And I started a podcast. Sometimes I don’t approach events as a journalist—I’ll go to a hacking conference just because. Sometimes I’ll come across something that’s not in my beat and report on it anyway, because it’s fascinating. Being able to remake myself at whim is one of my favorite things about freelancing.

These seven years have been an amazing ride! Here’s to seven more.

It’s a short and sweet roundup of posts I wrote that were published in October. (There are about five more in purgatory, though, and I have a half dozen assignments on top of that so November should be a doozie!)

Why Scribd Changes Copy-Pasted Text To 104-Point Comic Sans (Motherboard) I noticed this while cutting and pasting from a legal document to prep for a podcast, and had to investigate.

Figure Out The Best Training Option For Your Unique Circumstance (Performance Menu, paywalled) If you want to get your sweat on but can’t decide between following a workout program from a book, signing up for group training, splurging for personal training, and so forth, this article will help you figure out the best option based on your specific situation.

Podcasts

Texas Withdraws From Federal Refugee Resettlement Program (Interview with Dylan Baddour, reporter for the Houston Chronicle)

The CIA’s Not-So-Covert Plan For (Cyber)War With Russia (Interview with Trevor Timm, executive director at Freedom of the Press Foundation, and columnist for the Guardian)

Friday Buyouts From The Wall Street Journal (Interview with Jennie Phipps, independent writer and editor and the owner of Freelance Success)

But First, Coffee And Puppies

I was also a guest on Episode 31 of the This Makes Me Happy podcast.

This month, I spoke at Tales From the Cybercrypt,  a Jewish tech journo panel moderated by Alan Zeichick, alongside Howard Cohen and Esther Schindler, and Arizona Jewish Life wrote a post about me before the event. Monday Morning Dumpster Dive, my new podcast with Jimmy Jenkins, made it to KJZZ’s podcast page! Check out our old episodes on our page there.There’s also an RSS subscription. My husband and I beat the heat with a quick trip to the White Mountains (hiking! cabins! unplugging due to poor WiFi!), and I started training at an amazing gym with an amazing coach. And yet, I somehow managed to get some work done… Here are nine posts of mine from five different sites that went live in August.

• Interview: Meet Kor Adana, The Man Who Keeps Mr. Robot’s Hacks on Point (Forbes) The writer and tech producer, a former network security analyst himself, explains how he keeps the hacks on the show real, deals with legal issues, and balances the show’s riveting storyline with accurate technical details.

• Mr. Robot Season 2, Episode 5: 5/9 Truth: Wake Up Sheeple! (Forbes) Four tech experts discuss the smarthome hack, two-factor authentication, and Fsociety’s sometimes lax operational security.

• Mr. Robot Season 2, Episode 6: Angela Moss Becomes A Skiddie (Forbes) This episode, we discussed femtocells, Signal, credit card cloners, rubber duckies, and what to do when you get caught committing espionage. (Don’t try this at home, skiddies!)

• Mr. Robot Season 2, Episode 7: What Is Real? (Forbes) This week, we discussed the nature of reality, evil-coin, and the episode’s big reveal. (YES, there are spoilers.)

• Mr. Robot Season 2, Episode 8: Darlene Takes Off The Heart-Shaped Glasses (Forbes) In this episode, we discussed dead body opsec, hacking passwords, conference calls, Stagefright, phone forensics, messaging tools, and so much more.

• Building An MVP That Works (Dice Insights) Determining the right time to release a minimum viable product isn’t easy. You have to be careful not to pack in too many features.

• How VR Will Help Sculpt The Athlete Of The Future (Motherboard) Virtual reality has the potential to improve how elite-level athletes prepare for the big game.

• What Happens At The Gym Stays At The Gym (Performance Menu). The first of a two-part series, focusing on protecting people’s privacy at the gym. (Part two will include technical solutions for gym owners. (This post is paywalled but you can buy the issue for $5.99 or an annual subscription for $30.)

• Coping With Suicide Through Old Chat Logs (Daily Dot) I wrote about what I learned about my friend’s death by reviewing our Google Chat message history.

Jimmy Jenkins and I started a podcast covering Friday news dumps so they don’t get buried. We almost got buried since there were five (count ’em) news dumps last Friday. In our fifth episode, we looked at Manafort’s resignation from the Trump campaign, Ken Starr’s resignation from Baylor, Arpaio being recommended for criminal contempt charges, Baltimore terminating its contract with a government lawyer accused of past neo-Nazi ties–and the man who hired him resigning, and the latest on South Mountain Freeway expansion court battle.

Make sure to listen, and please help spread the word.

Jimmy Jenkins and I started a podcast covering Friday news dumps so they don’t get buried. In our fourth episode, we spoke with attorney Aaron Williamson about a federal judge overturning the conviction of Brendan Dassey for the murder of Teresa Halbach.

Make sure to listen, and please help spread the word.

Jimmy Jenkins and I started a podcast covering Friday news dumps so they don’t get buried. In our third episode, we spoke with NPR Business Correspondent Sonari Glinton about Tesla’s Gigafactory woes. We also discussed Trump’s endorsement of Paul Ryan and John McCain.

Make sure to listen, and please help spread the word.

Last month, I stepped down as an organizer of the Phoenix chapter of Freelance Spark. (Organizers in other cities stepped down as well.) I started volunteering with Freelancers Union in January 2015, holding my first event in February at GangPlank in Chandler. Soon, videographer Ita Udo-Ema joined me as a co-organizer, before I went solo in order to move the event to CoHoots in downtown Phoenix on October 2015 in hopes of drawing a larger crowd. Our June meeting would’ve been tomorrow (Wednesday) so I wanted to give an explanation.

From the beginning of my volunteer stint, I noticed two things. First, it became immediately apparent that the Freelancers Union staff (which doesn’t include many former or current freelancers) wanted to basically run the show with very little feedback from volunteers—even going so far as to provide “scripts” in each month’s material for us to read aloud, often to promote their own health insurance offerings or initiatives. And second, I noticed that this non-profit, whose goal is (supposedly) to help freelancers thrive and grow, was instead invested in how much additional work it could get from volunteers. What more could chapter leaders be doing? Early on, I remember leaving a Google Hangout for this very reason. It was exhausting.

At one point, Spark wanted to reprint one of my blog posts, and asked me for a photograph. When I asked for specs, they sent me a laundry list that would be more appropriate for a paid graphic designer or photographer to receive from a client: body turned towards camera, high resolution (non blurry/grainy), landscape orientation (not square), negative space–the more the merrier–around your entire silhouette (except for the bottom, no part of you touches the edge of the photo), minimum resolution: 72 dpi, minimum dimensions: 700 px tall, 900px wide, at least 300KB,” it read in part. Of course, they forgot to add a link to the original post until I wrote back in with a reminder. Priorities, amirite?

Freelance Spark seems to cater to fledgling freelancers, rather than established professionals, focusing its campaigns on things like legislation in New York (which wouldn’t affect many members) and a laundry list of unpaid invoices by its members that it’s titled “the world’s longest invoice” (in spite of the fact that pointing to plight of unpaid freelance work doesn’t exactly help the profession, or how it’s perceived by others). But it wasn’t lost on even the greenest attendees that the curriculum provided was of increasingly poor quality. Perhaps as a byproduct of material that wasn’t applicable to most of the people in the room, attendance to meetings dwindled. Even when many people RSVPed for events, only few would show up, and I got used to recycling unused material at the end of the night month after month. On multiple occasions, our gathering had just one or two attendees. I found myself wondering whether it was worth it, but discussing it with the Freelancers Union powers that be was pointless, as they provided little feedback or assistance.

Some of these issues came to a head in our Slack channel when a Freelancers Union staffer decided that we would all be charging for events going forward to prevent no-shows. Not all organizers were thrilled with the idea of asking members to pay for events we were hosting as volunteers, in space generously provided free of charge, but we were never even asked.

In response to growing conversation and actual feedback from its unpaid volunteers, Freelancers Union leaders decide to shut down the discussion and send out a survey. In response to my concerns with Freelance Spark meetups, I was sent an email and asked to hop on the phone with two organizers so that we could discuss my tone.

I had already been planning to resign because I didn’t feel like my volunteer work was making a positive impact, because the material seemed meaningless, and because–after months of this–I didn’t envision a possibility for change. But I was waiting for a scheduled happy hour (as a way to say thanks to our hosts) and for a session on security for small businesses, which I was asked to help develop curriculum for. Prior to being asked to create written material, I was asked to be on a panel (which never happened). As I was surveying chapter leaders for information to cover (something, incidentally, that Spark hadn’t really ever done when designing curriculum), a Freelancers Union organizer asked me to tack on information on IP and copyright, which is not only problematic for multiple reasons, but also out of scope. After agreeing to multiple requests to help with this session, I was then asked to hop on the phone to essentially repitch the idea. Later, the scheduled talk was quietly removed from the calendar.

How many freelancers haven’t had this problem? Someone asks you to do something, then when you agree, asks you to explain how you’re qualified and essentially pitch it to them? It’s annoying when it’s paying work, and honestly a little bit insulting for unpaid work. Freelancers Union relies on unpaid volunteers, and apparently views our time as expendable. I’m not sure how it distinguishes between “promoting the interests of independent workers” and promoting its own interests through the unused and unacknowledged (let alone unpaid) labor of independent workers, which is how I knew it was time to say goodbye.

After a year and a half of being dismissive of concerns, it’s hard to say whether Freelancers Union will be able to rebuild trust with its cadre of volunteers, or demonstrate that its staffers are familiar with freelancing and care about the needs of independent workers (beyond soliciting unpaid labor and trying to sell insurance). Running a successful remote group of volunteers isn’t easy even when it’s done properly, and I can’t even imagine how hard it would be when done wrong.

I did make some great connections through Spark, so not all was lost. And information wants to be free. In addition to teaching multiple workshops on online privacy and security for small businesses at my coworking space, and cohosting several events at another coworking space and the downtown library, I’ve already started organizing informal meetups for networking and troubleshooting sessions without forced curriculum, and without being asked to push a dismissive and out-of-touch organization’s agenda. Here’s to mutual assistance and the spirit of d.i.y., which drew a lot of us to freelancing in the first place.

It’s been a busy month for events! After attending RightsCon in San Francisco, I co-organized and participated in two CryptoParties here in Phoenix, one at Mod and one at the Burton-Barr Public Library. Missed them? Follow @cryptopartyphx on Twitter, and check out David Huerta’s slides on when ads stare back, Will Bradley’s Prezi on encrypted messaging, and my slides on basic operational security. (Jeremy Leung was our fourth presenter.) You can also check out my Mid-Week MindTweak at Co+Hoots on May 25th at 12:30 to get food truck food and learn some ways to keep your business secure.

Freelancers attending the Society for Professional Journalists Western Regional Conference in Phoenix this Saturday can catch me at the freelancer’s survival hack panel moderated by KJZZ reporter Carrie Jung, where I’ll be answering questions alongside fellow freelancers Jimmy Magahern and Maritza Felix. And, as always, Freelance Spark is the first Wednesday of the month.

As far as posts this month, I do have seven to share.

• Apple Bug Exposed Chat History With A Single Click (The Intercept) I’m excited about this one! Bishop Fox researchers discovered a security vulnerability in the Mac version of Apple’s Messages app allowed users to be compromised by malicious links, and I wrote it up for, uh, the best site of all time (with a fabulous editor)

• 5 Reasons You Should Stop Shortening URLs (Forbes) A recent paper published by Cornell Tech researchers showed that shortened URLs can be cracked to spy on people—but that’s just one reason to avoid bit.ly and sites like it. Here are five more. (And yes, do as we do, not as we say. I do my best to refrain from shortening links myself, but can’t speak for sites I write for!

• This Is The Easiest Way To Password Protect A Word Document (Forbes) How to protect a single Microsoft Office file with a password to stop others from opening and/or modifying it. You don’t even have to download anything. I wrote this post when a friend of mine asked for help and I didn’t know what to say.

• Security News You Might Have Missed: Microsoft Sues The Government Over Secret Cloud Data Searches (Forbes) I miss writing WIRED’s security roundup so much that I’m doing it for Forbes. Microsoft sues the Justice Department, Apple patches a Messages vulnerability but no longer updates QuickTime for Windows, Australian federal police admit to seeking a journalist’s metadata, a study shows that location data from two apps can identify you, and more.

• Security News You Might Have Missed: $1.3M iPhone Hack, Feds Want More Apple Data, More (Forbes) This week, the government revealed it paid at least $1.3m for tool to unlock San Bernardino phone, a transparency report revealed that US government orders for Apple user data quadrupled, the secret FISA court ignored a public advocate’s concerns over FBI access to NSA data for domestic crimes, NSAs were deemed legal (for now).

• Security News You Might Have Missed: Waze Stalking, Email Privacy Act Passes House, More (Forbes) Government requests for Facebook user data spike, awareness of mass surveillance led to plummeted Wikipedia traffic on entries related to terrorism, a former Tor developer now creates malware for the government to track Tor users, and more security news you might have missed this week.

• [Paywall] Community Gardening For Fun And Produce (The Performance Menu) Why and how to get started growing your own food in a community garden.

Less than 24 hours before its planned showdown with Apple, the FBI moved to vacate March 22nd’s hearing. The request was granted.

“On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farook’s iPhone. Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook’s iPhone. If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple Inc. (“Apple”) set forth in the All Writs Act Order in this case,” the filing read in part. Government attorneys proposed filing a status report with the court by April 5th, 2016.

The hearing was meant to determine whether the government can use the All Writs Act to compel Apple to create a new vulnerability in its software, sign it, and deliver it to an iPhone belonging to a deceased San Bernardino shooter, so that investigators can peek inside the phone (in spite of the fact that it likely doesn’t even have anything of value on it). This came on the heels of a federal magistrate judge in Brooklyn ruling that the government does not have the authority to compel Apple to unlock an iPhone using the All Writs Act.

The news was first reported on Politico.