Starting Tuesday (Feb. 3, 2015), I will be a full-time writer for The Wirecutter and The Sweethome.
I haven’t been a true full-time, salaried, actually employed anything since 2009. At Lifehacker, I was technically a freelancer: first in a kind of not-really-legal way, as sussed out by the Department of Labor, and then 30 hours a week by choice, so I could keep the door open for other writing opportunities.
It’s a big move for me. If you don’t hear from me for a while after this post, now you know why.
Why the change? Lots of reasons. The main one, the most important one: I truly like the work at the Wirecutter/Sweethome (which are the same company, in two different brands/focuses). Getting to research deeply into products we use every day, devising tests, reading more than can ever make the page about the history and science and popular misconceptions behind heavily marketed objects: I dig it.
As for freelancing: I had a very good run, from what I understand. Stories of writers jumping into freelancing and finding the waters scant and hard to navigate are legion. I was lucky, very lucky, to have people willing to suffer me across various projects.
I’m most curious about the actual changes of schedule and habit, and how myself and the people around me will deal with it. I won’t be available to take on goofy or helpful or speculative side projects, at least without serious planning. Emails about things outside work, even projects I helped to start, will wait even longer now (I hope?). I will be switching between projects, sure: cutting boards to trash cans to recipe apps, and the like. But it’s all toward a common goal, a single venue, in regular communication with a select few editors.
People do this all the time, right?
Away I go.