Being off sick as a freelancer

with a mini dose of politics

This is an old one, and not quite relevant for a diverticular flare-up. (Actually this looks like quite an inviting kind of ill. Can I have this next time, please? )

On Thursday I was feeling ‘a bit off’ most of the day. I did my work, and mostly that was on my current editorial project management contract, as we had some time-sensitive things that we all needed to chip in with. It’s nice work, but my particular preferences for how to work do not align with work that has to be ‘jumped on’ and ‘turned around’ quickly. It provides way too many cortisol injections for my body that is prone to break with too much of that. And yet, somehow, I so often find myself doing work that relies on an almost constant flow of that kind of work!

Fortunately, this project doesn’t have too much of that at the moment. But I have two other projects going on, one of which also comes in batches, though batches with a reasonable turnaround. Except when the batches overlap and one turns out to take much longer than you anticipated. So I have been working on multiple short deadlines for a couple of weeks now – some things to turn around that morning, or by the next lunchtime; some where I was running behind but also waiting on answers to queries before I could fully proceed; others where I could be getting on with them but didn’t really have time to until the deadline appeared over horizon.

Oh, and last week we had family visiting as well. Which was lovely. And forced me to have some time off, making food, eating food, playing board games, going out for dinner (eating food again, I know), though it would have been nicer to spend more time with them. Most evenings I went back to my desk after the meal or the games for a couple of hours. Most mornings I was starting work at 5 or 6, though often stopping in the middle of the day for longer than I would or finishing the main day earlier. Wednesday night we went out for dinner and I had a delicious salad. Which had pomegranate seeds in it. Unfortunately, due to the build up of stress, meant that those seeds probably (can never be absolutely certain) sparked a diverticular flare-up. Which was what was making me feel ‘a bit off’ all day Thursday. We had another meal out on Thursday (thankfully I plumped for macaroni cheese, though did also have a beer, which doesn’t mix well with my diverticular flare-ups) and after that I pretty much just slouched in the armchair feeling worse and worse until I made my way to bed, definitely not via my desk (in fact, I didn’t even remember to switch the computer off, I was avoiding it so much).

Friday hit me with a fever and a tonne of pain. I had to let my colleagues on the editorial management project know that I would not be able to do anything that day and couldn’t guarantee anything over the weekend, either. And then I spent almost the entire day and night in bed, with a couple of hours grace on the sofa during a brief period when paracetamol reduced the pain enough to be there. But mostly I slept. And drank broth and smoothie and water. (Because that’s what I have to do for at least a day when I have a flare-up; followed by a day of soup and custard and similar, not quite liquid, but not quite solid food; followed by at least a couple of days of low-fibre, but more solid food – well-cooked pasta, well-cooked vegetables; followed by gradually sneaking fibre back in, testing whether I’m ready for it. And then I can go back to my normal, pretty healthy, high-fibre, very plant-based diet – which you can read about on The Illustrated Plant Kitchen!)

On the editorial management project, someone will probably have picked up the particular task I would have been doing Friday morning, though there are still a couple of tasks I’ll need to get back to on Monday. Because on a project like that there’s a team and there are people to cover for when someone’s sick or on holiday. For my other project I don’t have that. I either miss deadlines, ask for extensions or work extra hard to pick everything up when I’m better. Not just in terms of the work needing to be done, but because if I don’t do that work, I lose that money. More to the point, if I take two days off for being ill, I have to fit that two days of work in somewhere, because there is other work booked in after it. If I’m doing project management or editorial management work that is based on x days a week or x hours a week and I am off sick, while there are usually people to pick that work up and cover it, that is likely to lead to a reduced income that month (unless I am able to make up those hours at some other point, but that’s not guaranteed on all projects, it depends on work flows and so on). So whatever type of work I am doing I either lose money or I lose time at a later point.

So my weekend, which was already going to have some working in it (maybe 5 or 6 hours ove the weekend) is now filled with work, while I should really just be lying around having a full relax and recover, because there is a constant stream of work to get through right up until our next actual holiday toward the end of September.

As freelancers, we don’t get sick pay or holiday pay. We also don’t get maternity pay. Theoretically, we could claim sickness benefit or maternity allowance, but they are so pitifully tiny and the rules are ridiculously stringent that most people don’t. A week’s maternity allowance is less than one day of what I make normally. And you are absolutely not allowed to do any work whatsoever during the time you are claiming it. So, I was always back at work within a month or less of giving birth. Because we couldn’t afford for me not to be.

I think there should be sick pay and maternity allowance for the self-employed. I would not have a problem with paying a higher self-employed NI rate to cover this (perhaps to match the employer NI contribution). During the pandemic self-employed people (well… that’s a whole other discussion because not all self-employed people) got the SEISS grant, based on their taxable profits over the previous three years. If they had any reduction in work. So, make a similar payment available for when people cannot work for other reasons, such as sickness and parental leave. Let self-employed parents have some work-free time with their newborns, as others are entitled to. Also, I would like to see a minimum self-employed rate, that takes into account all the extra outgoings we have that employees don’t. So that no company can ‘offer’ rates that are unsustainable. While publishing rates are generally higher than some of the other industries that use a lot of self-employed people (the one that immediately springs to mind here is delivery driving), there are still some very low hourly rates that sometimes get offered. (There are also some very low salaries in publishing, so it’s not like that doesn’t need addressing, too.)

I worked out the other day that we would actually need to be charging £45 an hour to enable time off for some proper holidays, some sickness, the likelihood of some time in between projects (rather than having them end up overlapping all the time to ensure we are working full time) and all the extra admin and training and learning that employees get. The highest day rate I have got doesn’t come to that and I very rarely get that high rate. I only get it for high-level project management. And I can’t do that full-time. My mental health can only cope with that work for up to three days a week (the cortisol thing again); I need to intersperse it with low-cortisol work like typesetting, design and illustration. I find it a bit strange that I can work for such a huge range of hourly or day rates (and there are also job rates that can break down to really good hourly rates or less than minimum wage, if you don’t spot all the requirements – or they change). I have decades of experience and some specialisms that mean I bring a lot to any job. But there will still be a different rate between proofreading and development editing; between design and typesetting; between editorial and project management. I wonder if there are publishing freelancers out there who have an unwavering hourly/day rate that they charge for any work? Or maybe others usually only take one type of work so get the same rate all the time.

And all of this worries me a bit, because the other industry I work in and am hoping to make the major industry I work in has similar issues of low and/or uncertain pay. What I’ve experienced so far in illustration has been acceptable (but not amazing) pay for the hours I have worked. It has been on a level with what I get in publishing. But I haven’t been able to find a consistent stream of it yet that would enable me to switch full time. And I think it would be much much harder to find that than it is in publishing in general, because a publisher isn’t going to use the same illustrator for every job and nor are most potential clients. There might be some that will want a consistent style for a year or two for website and packaging content, but then they will have a refresh and be looking for a different style. I think you need a much wider client base for illustration to be able to have a steady stream of work to sustain you full time. I do see some editorial illustrators getting regular columns with newspapers or magazines. And I also see illustrators who are working on multiple books for the same publisher, so clearly it is possible, but I think it’s definitely not an easy ride.

I think this is probably something a lot of us here struggle with in some way (for many that may be one of the reasons to be on Substack), whether you’re an illustrator, a writer, or some other creative freelancer.

How do you balance projects and work to ensure you cover what you need to earn? What do you when you’re sick? Have you taken parental leave and, if so, did you do so by saving beforehand or borrowing and paying it back at a later point, or something else? Do you think there should be sick pay and paid parental leave for freelancers or do you think that, by making the choice to be self-employed, we are automatically not entitled to that and other things employees are entitled to? And, if you’re an illustrator, have you managed to fill your calender (and bank balance) without overwhelm and panic?

(From what I’ve seen, the author illustrators are the most likely to achieve this balance, but I know there are others who do, too, but equally I rarely see an illustrator who doesn’t at some point mention overwhelm and having to work evenings and weekends to finish a project at least once or twice a year.)

I thought I might try to include a little something I’ve drawn (that isn’t hand lettering for the Substack - which I am loving creating, by the way, so if anyone fancies paying me to create some similar hand-lettering I would be very interested!) each week.

I made this or my sister and her partner, who recently got too super cute little (black) kittens. And we also have two black cats. So it’s a thing. I should probably print a copy out to put on our wall, too!