I often ask myself what I  have accomplished lately just so I can answer that question myself and feel proud of what I have accomplished.

In December and January, I edited two catalogs from an outdoor furniture company. Each one was approximately 122 pages long. One was called “Trade” (it was aimed at institutions, gardens, museums, and such) and the other “Retail” (it targeted residential customers).

The catalogs were sent to me as PDFs and I used Adobe Acrobat to edit them, placing virtual sticky notes wherever there was an issue. I verified the text, the SKU numbers, the prices, and (in the case of Trade) the dimensions of the products. I have to say that the furniture company did an excellent job putting the catalogs together, because neither one had many issues that needed correcting. I finished Trade on January 6 and Retail on January 24 (they were not sent to me consecutively).

Besides putting out its annual catalogs, the furniture company is in the process of revamping the online descriptions of its products. The descriptions for every single product, which are given to me in Word documents, are run by me before they go live on the company website. Besides editing the text, I must also verify each product’s SKU code on the existing website (the codes are not changing). I also have to check product dimensions if they are given in a description.

What is unique about editing these product descriptions is that I was requested to not, repeat, NOT use the Track Changes feature in MS Word, because my liaison at the company believes it makes things too messy. (There’s something to be said for that…) I am currently plugging away at the product descriptions. Some are one or two pages, others 20 or 30, depending on the sizes of the furniture collections.

What have you accomplished lately?

Does anyone like working at their computer while it’s dark outside? I certainly don’t.

Of course, there are days (nights?) when I must do so despite my preferences.

My husband works from 1:00 pm to 9:30 pm, so my time with him is in the mornings. Thus, I get most of my work done in the afternoons and evenings. The afternoons are the easiest time for me to work (as long as I have my coffee and/or Diet Mountain Dew). Psychologically, the evenings are another story.

In the dark winter months, the skies darken around 5:00 pm (if not before), which means that if I work just before dinner or any time after dinner, I work with blackness outside the window of my home office. Granted, there are vertical blinds on the window (thank Heaven) which I close to minimize this effect, but I am still aware of the pitch darkness outside. I don’t like the dark. In the winter, I have more lights on in my condo at night that I probably need, but that gives me comfort and the peace of mind I need to work effectively.

It doesn’t matter that I live in an area with a lot of light pollution. I know it’s dark, and the eerie hum of the HVAC behind my office wall and loud sucking sound of the noisy vent above my workstation do not help at all.

If I must work in the evening, I prefer to do so in the spring and summer months, when it is light outside then. It is much more comforting. There are a few disadvantages to working in the bright evenings: the noise of kids playing outside, the cars going by whose drivers insist on sharing their music with everybody, the lawnmowers. (Actually, the sound of lawnmowers soothes me. So does the sound of propeller airplanes overhead.)

How about you? Do you prefer to work when it is dark or light outside?

I am extremely grateful to God for being able to be a self-employed editor for many reasons. However, one of the most important reasons is that I can be there for my elderly parents.

If one of them has a crisis, I can drop everything, reschedule it quickly, and drive the hour to where they each live. (My father is in a memory care facility that is located in a different town than my mother’s condo, but which is thankfully only about ten minutes from her home.) I can reschedule work for any time I want, including weekends. (Like most people, I do not particularly like working on weekends, but I will do so to meet a deadline.)

For example, this past October, my mother was a victim of credit card fraud. When she told me about it, I quickly cleared the next day of work. This required quick but careful thinking. This task could be done the day after tomorrow, that task could be done Monday, et cetera. Prioritizing was key. I was able to travel to my mother’s place the next day to help her deal with the phone calls that come with being a fraud victim. (Shame on whoever did that to her, by the way.)

One thing to always remember is that family comes first. In August 2023, I was scheduled to leave for the Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA) conference in Alexandria, Virginia on a Thursday. The previous Tuesday, my father suffered a severe fall. After checking in on my parents, I said to my husband, “If I have to miss the conference to help them out and lose [X] dollars, I will. Family comes first.” He agreed without hesitation. It turned out that everything was taken care of that Tuesday and my father was all right (thank God) and so I was able to attend to the conference later that week after all.

A traditional job would not afford me such flexibility. Sadly, I know a woman who worked in a lab at a research university that I had worked in before. She was fired for spending “too much” time caring for her ailing mother while she was working there, and not enough time in the lab. Talk about kicking someone while they are down.

If you are self-employed, how do you manage your schedule? I am especially interested to hear your answer if you have children.

I am preparing to say goodbye to another year. I’m sorry to say that 2024 was not kind to my business, as I hit multiple dry spells. Nor was 2024 a good year for me personally, at least beginning in the fall. The fall may constitute only the last third of the year, but this fall was particularly painful. No, nothing is wrong with my husband or marriage. We are talking close friendships going bad.

So to 2024, I say, “Good riddance.”

Now on to 2025, for which I have high hopes. In fact, in early December, I declared to a good friend, “2025 is going to be the coolest year ever.” That’s right, 2025, so don’t you let me down.

I do not make resolutions. Resolutions are rules you make for yourself in January and then forget all about them by February. Instead, for each year, I make goals. This is a much more positive way to approach a new year.

What are my goals for 2025? I’m glad you asked.

1. I wish to gain at least two more regular clients. I am already on my way to doing this. Through hundreds of cold emails, I have found two researchers who are interested in my editing services.
2. I wish to learn (much) more about AI and take a class on AI specifically for editors. I’ve heard it said that in the future, an editor will compete not with AI, but with editors who know how to use AI. I wish to be the latter. (Yes, I said in a previous post that I did not like AI and would never touch it. Sue me.)
3. I wish for my husband and me to commemorate our 20^th wedding anniversary in the Outer Banks, North Carolina. (Neither of us have ever been there, if you can believe that.)
4. Two very important but very private personal goals, the ins and outs of which I cannot go into on this blog, but which are presently causing me a boatload of stress.

How about you? Do you have goals for 2025 that you wish to share?

This is a question I often get as a freelance editor. People are curious to know what I work on, or in some cases, whether I have work to do or not. Yay for the former, boo for the latter.

I would like to take some time at this moment to share what my latest projects have been, and what I have coming up.

In November, I edited a scientific literature review. It was on treatment-resistant depression. Having struggled with mental illness myself, I took the content very seriously. Editing the literature review was highly interesting but very challenging, for there were a great deal of abbreviations in the paper; thank Heaven for the AcronymAlyse macro that I learned two years ago. Otherwise, I would not have been able to keep track of what the acronyms stood for.

I also had to use Edifix again. Edifix is a Godsend that places all the references in a paper in the same format. I used it to place all this paper’s references in APA 7 format.

After completing this edit and returning it on November 21, I had an “easy time” during which I edited a company’s retail emails. Finally, thank Heaven, last Friday a project came to me from the same company which will keep me busy until approximately early February. The company is a furniture company and right now I am editing their trade catalog. In January, I will edit the company’s retail catalog, and simultaneously, I will edit revised descriptions of its products for its website. This will keep me busy, all right, and I love being busy with my work.

After that, I am not sure what work will come my way. I am certain that some scientific research papers will be sent to me in 2025, as well as more material from the furniture company. I am hoping for more clients, and I am sure they will come.

So, what are YOU working on?

These days, it seems there are three main ways to communicate other than in-person conversations: phone calls (also known as voice calls), email, and texting.(I am not counting handwritten or paper letters because they are seemingly a lost art, although I miss them very much.)

These three main methods of communication are highly sensitive, and it is important to know when to use each one. There are advantages and disadvantages to each.

The main advantage of the phone call is that one can hear voice tone, inflexion, and volume from the other person. This makes the intentions of the other person clearer. If the other person is being sarcastic, for example, you will know. If you only see their sarcasm written out, you may misinterpret it as literal.

However, the main disadvantage of the phone call is that it is invasive. A person feels that they have to drop what they are doing to answer a ringing phone, and if they are the kind of person who does so while they are driving…ICK.

Email is much less invasive, since a person checks it when they want to, and is thus more open to receiving it than a phone call. I have heard email called “the coward’s method of communication,” since you can say what you want without saying it to the other person’s face (not always good). It is also to your advantage if you write well. However, if you are writing to someone to does not often check their email, you will wait a while for a response. Email is thus the slowest form of communication which I am discussing.

Texting, or instant messaging, is more invasive than email, in that you don’t choose when you get a text, just as you don’t choose when you get a phone call. However, they are considered less urgent than phone calls. When someone sends you a text, they don’t (usually) expect a reply immediately. Unfortunately, some people have an innate need to answer texts right away, such as when they are driving…DOUBLE ICK. Also, I have found that in a text, you don’t hear voice tone or inflexion and may misinterpret the message because of this.

Which of these three is your preferred mode of communication with someone you cannot see in person?

We all know it is frustrating when you order something important online, especially if you run a small business, and it has still not arrived after several weeks.

You track the package and cannot get any help from doing so.

Your item seems to have been lost in the cosmos—and worse yet, you have already shelled out good money for it.

What do you do?

DON’T panic. This does not help you or anyone else. It’s also unattractive and can be perceived as unprofessional. (Even if you are self-employed and work alone, you should always act like the professional you are.)

DON’T stew and call the people at the company from which you ordered or the delivery service bad names like “stupid” or “incompetent.” This will produce bitterness in your heart, and believe me, you don’t want that—no matter how powerful it might make you feel for a little while.

DON’T call the company from which you ordered and yell at them like a mad dog. See my note above about being professional. Besides, your call is most likely being recorded.

DO realize that mistakes can be made, and orders can be lost. It’s not like you have never made a mistake in your professional life.

DO take care of the problem right away. Otherwise, it may slip your mind and the issue will not be dealt with. Plus, your order will fall farther behind.

DO be courteous when you call the company. Chances are that you are not talking to the person whose fault the problem is, so if you are rude to them, that is not fair.

DO be calm. Simply answer the person’s questions, such as what the order number is and the date the product was ordered. Have your receipt in front of you on your computer screen, or printed out as a hard copy where you can see it.

What do you do when a product you ordered online won’t arrive?

That would be me. I turned 51 last week.

So what is it like to be 51?

Honestly, 51 does not feel much different from 50. Last year’s birthday hit me much harder in terms of getting older.

This has been said before, but I believe that if you haven’t grown up by the time you are my age, you don’t have to. Actually, this is only partially true.

However, who says I cannot watch Disney movies and play Centipede in the local retro arcade (Spinners, for those of you living in Frederick, Maryland)? Who says I cannot wear Converse (I would if it were not so expensive) or chew bubble gum?

Each year should have its accomplishments. Fiedler Editorial had a very dry summer from a business standpoint, but my accomplishment in that desert was being bold enough to send out hundreds of cold emails to university biochemistry/molecular biology department heads offering my editing services for their research manuscripts. I got exactly two positive responses and I was elated by them. I also got one “please remove my name from your mailing list” response, which stung, but did not keep me from moving on.

Another accomplishment in the desert was not having a single month where my earnings were zero. (Thank Heaven for small favors, right?)

I just had another accomplishment yesterday; I finished editing a scientific literature review. The number of abbreviations in the review made it quite challenging, and so did formatting the review. However, it was quite informative and I learned a lot. And I did what I do best—editing.

Do you have any accomplishments since your last birthday that you wish to brag about?