On my first year of independent work
This year was about staying afloat.
We all lost many things in 2020, some more than others, and I'm lucky enough to feel grateful in the midst of it all that I don't know what to think of it. Equal parts recap, reflection, and release, this post details my first year of freelancing during the first year of a global pandemic. For anyone considering the leap into independent consulting (contracting, freelancing, etc)—I hope it helps. Inspired by Tom Critchlow's indie-versary recaps.
I left my last 10-7 desk job on Wednesday, November 6, 2019, intending to freelance a bit as I recruited for the next job. Shortly after, Covid-19 tsunami'd our lives, breaking through our safe harbors. Each wave a new lesson: never mind the work, quick, preserve the life first!
My full-time conversations came to an indefinite hold, I plunged into the project-to-project flow, and incredulously, my haphazard collection of flotation devices buoyed me through the waves.
The sinking forces were also many: I'm the first in my family to be born in the states, with no corporate network from working at a brand name company, no reputation from staying in the same industry, no benefit of the doubt from looking or acting in ways society glorifies, and no cachet from an aspirational social media presence.
Yet I have giving and empowering mentors, talented and kind peers, sacrificial family and entrepreneurial blood, and divine grace. Plus the privilege of English and digital fluency to navigate government benefit systems. My parents left everything halfway through their life so I ostensibly wouldn't have to, but what can they say? Like father, like daughter.
The world needs more indie and more weird, pushing its boundaries and constructs. Here's the beginning of my tribute to that.
Table of Contents
- The Operating Work
- The Speculative Work
- The Stewardship Work
- The Life Work
- Onwards to 2021
The Operating Work
As natural, my projects reflected the (net)work of my last full time job in brand and product marketing. Breaking down my projects (by revenue) and how I'm planning for them to evolve:
Notes:
- Most of my work in 2020 spanned the gamut of digital marketing: content and campaign strategy, copywriting, design, project management, asset organizing, and customer service. For small to mid-size clients across consumer product, food & hospitality, and media.
- I've done a lot of social media work over the past few years, and I'm ready to dial it down. Open to the strategy of it but the execution can be relentless: rewarding when reactive, attached to optics and signaling, and co-dependent on dubious, slithering algorithms.
- I've noodled on web design and curation since ye olde days of Blogger and Tumblr, and this year I started creating websites for people and ideas larger than myself. Of the six sites, I built five on Semplice, a design-driven platform based on WordPress that needs little coding ability. A website example here. Aiming to keep pushing in immersive narrative design.
- Key moment when I scored my first project through cold application—as opposed to existing connection—for a lovely team at a literary magazine.
- I pitched my first published personal essay (w/photos) for food publication The Counter. Big thanks to my editors Mike and Jesse!
- I occasionally picked up 1-2 week sprints, in copywriting and UX design.
In 2021, I'd like for my roles to evolve from bolt-on digital marketer towards something like a strategic partner in brand content and media systems. Visualizing how I see those elements in relationship below, as a sort of spidery-flowery web molecule:
Content: What are the important stories to tell? The nucleus.
Media: How might we communicate them? The tendrils.
Systems: How does it all work together? The whole.
How I envision future engagements might look:
- Building editorial platforms for organizations to establish themselves as thoughtful media and content leaders. Orgs spanning design & innovation consultancies, food & hospitality, social equity-driven nonprofits, and new consumer product ventures.
- Upgrading digital marketing systems for editorial publications, potentially including audience development and engagement
- Helping independent journalists build niche news products for wild times
Today more than ever, we need individuals rather than corporations to guide the web’s future. The web is called the web because its vitality depends on just that—an interconnected web of individual nodes breathing life into a vast network. This web needs to actually work for people instead of being powered by a small handful of big corporations—like Facebook/Instagram, Twitter, and Google.
More succinctly put, I'd like to:
Help organizations deepen their voice as media brands, and media publications strengthen their digital presence. While holistically serving their human communities.
Reach me at vicky [at] studioqq.co if you'd like to talk about working together!
The Speculative Work
I wrote 67 newsletters (1.3 per week!) this year, to two groups of good people. I'm shocked, because that entailed a massive amount of reading, note taking, synthesizing, writing, and editing. It's a far cry from my past life sending emails to 120,000 people for the chance to win $1,200 worth of normcore travel gear. I now write to 1,000 people who are interested in questioning that very relationship: how might society, capital, and government live symbiotically?
Currant
Currant is my food media baby. It's a hybrid model of many things: global publication/community, public/gated space, and passive/interactive fun. It's thrilling but creating an amorphous publication in all strategic and operational senses is ten thousand fridge loads of time and work. Raising ten thousand glasses to my inimitable partner Sarah Cooke and our contributing team members. Building our team up = one of the most richly rewarding experiences of my year. ♥️
Highlights: I waited 2.5 hours in NYC's freezing winter AM for a rapid test before interviewing writer Mayukh Sen, which got picked up by Harvard's Nieman Lab. I canceled our first physical press party, and now we've opened our Discord. And much more, which you can read in my editor's letter in our 2020 Currant Annual Report below.
If we're lucky, we're still kicking. And if we're still kicking, we're still creatures that need to eat, through our zealous days of youth and retired days of senility and the muddle that is everything in between. That's why Currant exists: to clear the way through the mud. To uncover and connect food truths, carefully devein systems of their sh*t like our parents do with shrimp, and treat each other with dignity in the process.
Writing
In 2016, I started writing a Tinyletter to keep up with people I cared about. It's since matured into Curious Futures, a lovely regenerative space on Substack where I noodle on media, tech, and culture. (Literally—I use Adobe Creative Cloud to make hand drawn illustrations and designs for paid subscribers.) My readers support me, I support those whom I read, and we meet new people in the process. A blessed low stakes socializing.
My writing is hard to categorize or market, which I'm fine with. All I want is a digital cubby where I don't have to worry about growth or audience acquisition or SEO optimization and just let the words somersault out, stored in a safe squishy place.
Who is this for?
You like creative nonfiction but not enough to subscribe to The New Yorker
You’re disillusioned with your job or social status yet resentful of how ungrateful you are
You love the big coastal cities but for good reasons don’t live in one and would gladly pay rent vicariously (through me) while receiving updates on urban culture
You relate to high nerd energy, deadpan irony, and/or devastating truths
You wonder, there must be more than this
OpenIDEO
Following two months of multi-continental interviews, I joined the OpenIDEO New York Chapter Organizer team last April, along with my wonderful team members Kaleb, Gayatri, and Jess. Last summer, we devised an educational design sprint via Discord and Twitter, based on the Rockefeller Foundation sponsored Food System Vision Prize.
It's not easy to distill "innovative solutions to pressing social and environmental issues" into forward movement, whether resource-rich or not. Highlight: learning from chapter organizers across the globe, from London to Lagos to Beirut to Mexico City.
The Stewardship Work
Behind and before every project, every break, and every crisis comes the realities of ongoing business development. Not always in balance, but at least attempted. 🙂
- Continuous emails and calls with experienced people I admire, recruiters, friends starting new ventures, and those considering the freelance leap
- Contributing to seven distributed teams and digital communities
- Rebranding Studio QQ and IG @studioqq.co
- Pruning my digital garden. Even if I feel an urge to scrap all my digital/social platforms twice a year, I like how each contains distributed pieces of me, withholding full expression because they were never meant to carry that kind of weight on their own.
- Religiously updating my career and revenue planning sheets - color coding spreadsheets is a sick love of mine?
- Reading, listening, watching, & attending interesting things! Especially people and projects that unapologetically retain their wildness.
I don’t want to see the uniqueness and wildness of Chinese literature tamed and consequently lost in the English translation.
The Life Work
I have never relied so much on public institutions for my personal welfare, and I am a better citizen and journalist for it. I waded through New York's Health Plan Marketplace, applied for freelancer benefits c/o the CARES Act, incorporated my LLC, started my business bank account, sorted out taxes (I hope), and designed my own invoicing and project management systems. This all takes an obscene amount of time and maintenance, with continued updates as I learn from more established indies.
Onwards to 2021
I'd like to talk about 2020 without sounding trite or earnest or jaded or weary and I'm not sure I'm there yet, but at the least—my work this past year was highly stressful yet exhilarating, affirming yet frustrating.
I've also talked a lot about work, without mentioning rest. I know I'm going to burn out soon if I don't enforce a break for myself. Hopefully that'll happen sooner rather than later, but given that I have no dependents and no underlying health conditions—I can comparatively afford to be generous with my time, applying my margins of energy to support others whose reserves have gone negative.
Here's to another year, a little more positive.
If you'd like to talk about working together, you can reach me at vicky [at] studioqq.co. If you'd just like to talk, ping me at vickygu30 [at] gmail.com.
Special thanks:
For your advice and time: Paul Jun, Dan Oshinsky, Jodi Bryce, Julia Regan, Michala Sabnani, Deanna Ting, Hannah Chloe Lee, Rachel Meade Smith, Travers Johnson, Michelle Lin Park, Cherie Hu, Matt Daniels (for the best rejection email I've ever gotten)
For your mentorship: Elizabeth Tilton, Tessa Maffucci
For your encouragement and inspiration: Sarah Cooke, Eugene Kan, Charis Poon, Mayukh Sen, Tae McKenzie, Tom Critchlow, Will Pay, Alex Larson, Nora Keller, Anna Wilhelm, Dami Aboaba, CJ Quartlbaum, JP Preisser, Emerline Ji, Mark Stenberg, Patrick Moore
For your partnership: Sam Rose, Sally Luu, Leah Herman, Tavia Kowalchuk, Mike Lindgren, Jasmine Chou, Mary B Safrit, Luke Schmuecker, Caroline Cotto, Kate Anthony
For your support: Hayden Jeong, Rona Shen, Sam Hillman, Chaoyu Huang, Hannah Keem, Carolyn Hill, Ashley Hong, Melanie Henderson, Bailey Smith-Dewey, Anna Rickrode, and my family
