The problems of a faceless freelancer

When you’re a body in a room you’re a presence that’s hard to ignore. But in the freelance world too often we’re just voices in the ether. Our emails come from nameless places submitting our faceless pieces. And when you’re no longer needed it’s so much easier to just cut you off and let you disappear back into the internet void from which you sprung. 

I worked for a magazine for a time. It was a one man show. A product of his passions and rigid opinions. Yet, ultimately, the act of handing over concepts and ideas to be interpreted by a different pen was not one with which he was comfortable. And, as you might have guessed, this feeling was communicated to me only through a long silence and a series of unanswered messages. 

He cut me off like a spare part or a trailing thread. It appears we sacrifice our right to respectful treatment and consideration when we work outside of the daily office grind. But I’ll pay that price for being a free agent. In fact I regularly pay it. Over and over and again and again.