Freelance Jungle news: Summer is calling. Can you hear it?
Hello
Welcome to the October Freelance Jungle email.
The wind is howling in Wollongong. It often gets this way because I live near a lake and a beach on a skinny bit of land with a giant mountain to the side. You should see the electrical storms. It’s like a New Year’s show.
It kind of reminds me of this year. There was a force to 2020 that couldn’t be ignored. We started the year on the back of bushfires in so many states. Three out of four of the Freelance Jungle admins were in fire zones. We leapt from the bushfires into action with the petition to include freelancers in JobKeeper. I don’t think I slept most of March as we needled and pushed to be included with a petition. I did so many press interviews, it was hard to keep up. Half the team (myself included) went into an enforced lockdown because our disabilities were such that the risk of COVID-19 was too great. And then Jinny, as our Victorian admin, went into a long and challenging state-mandated lockdown.
We noticed in the Freelance Jungle people were far more stressed. As admins of a group of several thousand people, we instituted a nightly bedtime of 10pm and wake up of 8am. It was the only way to deal with the increased anger and frustration expressed at politician’s press conferences. Or sadly, the increase we saw in drug and alcohol abuse in the community. We did suicide interventions and referred people in crisis to Lifeline, counsellors, Beyond Blue and RU OK. An ambassador to RU OK Craig Mack generously jumped in to help via a seminar on resilience on our Crowdcast.
We relaxed some rules (like recommendations), we helped people save money with dedicated cost saver threads. Gave people the chance to promote themselves via I made This Thursday. And we built a calendar of events life stress downs and dress up lunches and crafternoons to let people know they were not alone. We ran events throughout October to help support mental health. And we sent postcards of love to our Melbourne Patrons to remind them they were not alone. As well as increasing the amount of educational content produced for Patreon via two 30 day challenges, monthly mini-classes, three full sized courses, blogs, stress reduction and crafting kits, monthly talks and more.
It has not been easy doing all this. My Dad has been in and out of experimental cancer trials all year- and in and out of hospital coping with the side effects. I went in for second surgery on my foot in February, the second in less than six months. I lost work and then I lost JobKeeper because I hadn’t earned anything to compare it to in the second-round offering.
Our other admins have not walked out unscathed by 2020 either. But their stories are not mine to tell.
What has happened is I have had to find a groove with Patreon. I’ve begun treating all I have collected, known and learnt in the last decade of freelancing and the 15 years before that like a recycle project. I am literally re-learning and writing constantly. I am taking old ideas, workshop presentations, projects- you name it. And I am deconstructing them so that I can strip out the knowledge and share it with you. I’ve invited people to speak, done heaps of interviews, run Zoom classes, built courses, and I have kept them much lower price than most so that people in a similar boat as me could still have access to freelance education.
Increasingly, I became aware of the disruption to supply chains and the threat of local businesses going under in the Illawarra. So, I ran a local networking project called Get your Gong on to connect struggling small businesses with local freelance talent. It received a small grant from Wollongong Council. I started a podcast called the A to Z of Wollongong with my partner, Richard Berndt. We use that podcast to explore Wollongong and the Illawarra in ways you can’t under COVID. We’ve done 20 interviews so far and we’re still asking for more. We would not have been able to do it at all if we hadn’t received a grant from Culture Bank Wollongong.
I’m spending the summer creating a calendar of courses and more stuff love up my Patreons. This is my way of not being at the mercy of flying monkeys or major catastrophe. I am doing client work and I am so grateful for the opportunities I have had to work across death literacy, help online stores get off the ground, write about disability, help with local tourism, and train clients online in community management and inclusion.
But I am also reminded at how fragile the world seems at the moment. How easily broken the apple cart wheels appear to be. So, I am digging in next year to try and be in charge of my destiny as much as possible.
That means I will be offering more assets, more content, more classes and hopefully pushing the envelope even more than I am doing now. I will also be revamping this newsletter. And looking at what I can build for you via the Patreon.
If you have ideas, get in touch.
In the meantime, here are some bits and bobs you may like while we observe the summer shutdown for the Freelance Jungle.
CHECK IN ONE FINAL TIME AT THESE FREE EVENTS
Say farewell to 2020 at our dress up stress down lunch. TOMORROW at 1:30pm to 2:30pm on Zoom. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86493240715
Celebrate the great unveiling of the freelance endeavours by five brave souls at the first ever Deadline Party. 2pm Sydney time, Wednesday 16th December. Only on Crowdcast.
THINGS TO READ
Get your social media in order with a focus on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn algorithms.
Feeling the pennies pinch? Indulge in some financial self-care.
Make some new friends and connect up with freelance communities from this list.
Are you reliable? Easy to get along with? Got the ability? Find out now.
End the year on a good note. Write a thank you letter to your clients.
Share your stories on the Freelance Jungle website. Guest blogging submissions are open now.
Check out the spring wrap up of amazing freelancer projects done by people in the Freelance Jungle.
Here’s a wrap up of client-based projects by Jungle freelancers. This clever bunch knows how to hustle, too. They’re also great at learning new freelance tricks, too.
Meet the artists hanging in the Freelance Jungle. And the word weaving fiction writers.
Check out the freelance maker projects. And maybe finish it off with a freelance podcast adventure.
The I made this Thursday #IMT thread will be taking a break until 2021 in the Freelance Jungle group. But you can still come and play in the meantime.
Action replays of events
Do you want to reclaim your time from social media? Want better strategies with dealing with trolls? Ginger Gorman joins us for a very special chat on the Crowdcast.
She opened up her life in one of the most delicately sad yet beautiful debut releases from an Australian author in the Girls. We talk to Wollongong Writer’s Festival director and author Chloe Higgins about storytelling, grief, and what it means open yourself on a page.
Until next year…
Please, be kind to you. Thank you so much for making a really tricky year one that was an inspiring one.
Rebekah