I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: I love the flexibility that being a freelancer gives me.

Take this blog post for instance – it has had at least three different “planned” release dates and two or three different topics. Funnily enough, I think flexibility has always been at the core of each idea! Go figure. But it is the flexibility of freelancing that has given me the freedom to make all of the changes and decisions that finally led me to this post. It let me take a few slow weeks in December when I traveled to England to visit friends I hadn’t seen in far too long and when I decided to put friends and family and the holiday season at the top of my list of priorities. It let me put my editing business on the back-burner at the end of December and beginning of January as I prepared and then launched my new art business, something that has given me so much joy (you can check it out here). And the flexibility of a freelance career is now allowing me the opportunity to start a new project in February, a project that is so close to my heart.

On January 20^th Donald Trump became the President of the United States of America. Even as I write this my pen is hesitating over my notebook (yes, I write everything down longhand first, it’s a mental thing) because I really have no response to that statement, or at least I didn’t last Friday. It left me speechless. Well, incapable of intelligible, polite speech, at any rate. If you did not vote for Trump in the election, then you likely know how I felt. BUT THEN. But then on January 21^st, millions of people around the world took part in the Women’s March, and suddenly I had a response. I had watched on Friday the 20^th as the people at the Concert 4 America stood up for what they believed in and said, in the words of NAACP President Cornell William Brooks, “We are consecrating this day with HOPE,” and I watched on the 21^st as millions of people acted with that same hope. And I knew I had to stand up and do something.

Hope must compel us to act.

Over the next eleven months, I will be creating eleven new pieces of art. Each month I will release a new piece, and 30% of the proceeds from the prints I sell of that piece will go to a specific charity or organization that will need our help in the coming days and months and years. That’s eleven months, eleven new pieces of art, and eleven different causes. If you would like more information about the project, I would encourage you to check out the blog post I wrote about it on my art site (which you can find here). Also, if you would like to receive updates on the project and each new piece/new cause, please be sure to subscribe to my art blog where all new updates will be posted from now on – I will be keeping my subscription lists for my editing blog and my art blog separate since not everyone who is interested in editing and writing is interested in art and vice versa. And one last note about the project: I am terrible at naming things – blog posts, my car, probably my future children. I also believe that the more opportunities we have to work with each other and listen to each other the better off we’ll all be. So if you feel so inclined, please help me settle on a name for this project by taking this quick survey. Everyone who takes the survey will receive a code for 10% off their next editing service OR art commission. The deadline for taking the survey is midnight on January 29^th.

Thank you for reading this post. I am so grateful that my freelance lifestyle has given me the flexibility to write blogs like this, start new projects I am passionate about, and act on my convictions. Please, join me in action, in chasing that hope that we all need right now, and in giving hope to others. Regardless of who you voted for in November, I think we can all agree that helping others should always be a priority.

What do you like about the freelance life? What are your thoughts on flexibility? How did the Women’s March affect you? Do you have any thoughts or suggestions on how I can improve my project? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments below!