Ask the cubicle expat: How do you handle sick days?

Charlene writes: “I’m a freelance writer (two years in) and have a steady client base. But for the first time since I became a freelancer, I’ve gotten hit with a nasty flu and can barely function. But feel compelled to because freelancer = work for $$. Missed hours = missed $$. How do you handle that?”

Ah, yes, the dreaded sick. There is no Easy button for this one, given that no one pays for your sick days when you freelance. Unless I’m in the ER (knock particle board), I usually work a third or half day when I’m fluish so that I don’t fall too far behind. Then I sleep a lot and catch up on my reading or soap opera viewing. If you don’t take the time to heal up, you risk staying sick longer and missing out on even more work days and dollars. (Been there and it’s not pretty.) Better to work a few extra hours to make up the cash once you’re healthy again than push yourself when you’re illing.

Disability insurance can help protect you against weeks of lost wages should you get seriously ill or injured. I confess to never having bought myself a policy, but since I’m a one-income household and haven’t been called a spring chicken in a while, I recently put this one on my to-do list.

There’s also the pesky matter of making your deadlines when you’re sick (but not hospital-sick, which essentially nixes any chance you have of making that deadline on Monday). Freelancers do ask their clients for extensions from time to time. Sometimes it’s no trouble for the client to give you a couple extra days; sometimes there’s no leeway in the schedule and you have to rally (or give up the work). If you hire out subcontractors (your own freelance underlings), giving up the work doesn’t hurt so much because you still get a cut of the cash — but that’s a topic for another day.

I’d love to hear how others deal with the dreaded sick as a solo worker, too, so feel free to chime in. And I will say this: One good thing about not working in someone else’s office every day is that you don’t get sick as much as your cube monkey friends do.

If you have a question you want the Cubicle Expat to answer, send it my way. Let me know if you want me to use your name and link to your site.

6 comments February 19th, 2007

Launch party photos

The fabulous Ariel Meadow Stallings — author, blogger, and friend extraordinaire — took some great shots of my book launch shindig at Elliott Bay Book Company this weekend. Here are her top shots. And here’s the whole series, for those of you who don’t want to miss a morsel.

Thanks to those of you who came to hear me read and crack jokes indoors on the nicest day we’ve had in Seattle in about eight months. If you missed the launch shindig, there are plenty more author events where that one came from.

And if you’d like to meet Ariel, she’s reading from her new book, Offbeat Bride: Taffeta-Free Alternatives for Independent Brides, this Tuesday, February 20th, at University Bookstore in Bellevue. (Details here.) I will be there. Will you?

5 comments February 19th, 2007