Taking Care of Your Physical and Environmental Health as a Freelance Editor

Hello everyone. We’re just about finished with January when this episode is first airing and it’s already been a doozy as expected. So I thought it would be a great time to kick off a series on freelance editor wellness, wellbeing, self-care…I don’t really like any of those words, but essentially we’re gonna be talking about how to take care of ourselves in a holistic way.

Meaning we’re going to be discussing lots of different aspects throughout this series, and today we’re starting with physical and environmental well-being. So a brief content warning: I’m going to be talking about physical health, and that is going to include food and movement. So let’s get into it.

Welcome to The Modern Editor Podcast, where we talk about all things editing and what it’s like to run an editorial business in today’s world. I’m your host, Tara Whitaker. Let’s get to it. 

Welcome back to the podcast. So this episode is kicking off our series on freelance editor well-being and taking care of ourselves.

And as we all know, a big part of being a freelancer is realizing and recognizing that we are our businesses in that we don’t have a bunch of employees, most likely, or people who can cover for us, like if we were in an office job and we could, you know, ask a colleague to do something for us. We don’t really have that option, and that’s why it’s so imperative that we take care of ourselves.

Now, I can guarantee when I say “take care of ourselves,” something specific comes up for you. And you might have even rolled your eyes being like, yeah, that’d be great to take care of myself, but I don’t have time to do that ’cause I’m taking care of everyone else. If that was you, I’m especially talking to you.

If you’re a caregiver of any sort, chances are you’re taking care of yourself last, if at all. And frankly, that needs to change. Is it gonna be easy? Course not. Is it worth it? And do you owe it to yourself? Absolutely.

Now, of course, it’s going to be impossible for me to try to address every single thing, and there are going to be things that I mention that aren’t going to be applicable to you. So as always, with everything that I say, literally, please take what works, tweak it if you can, and leave the rest. 

And please don’t think that you need to change all of the stuff we’re gonna talk about today at once. That is a recipe for disaster. It’s not gonna work. You’re gonna burn out; it’s just not gonna work.

So you’re gonna pick one small thing to work on and then move on to the next small thing. And I’m gonna share more details about that as we go along and more at the end.

Okay, so let’s kick off physical environmental well-being. Again, this is gonna look different for every single one of us. We have chronic illnesses and disabilities, different levels of mobility, and different living situations, and some of us are caregivers, some of us are pet owners.

I mean, there’s so many different variables. So focus on what you can do, what you can control, and what you can change within your ability. Okay? Specifically, physical well-being can include so many things, and I’m gonna cover a few. And honestly, the ones that I’m covering are the ones that I’ve found are most important to me that I have found have made the biggest impact as a business owner, as a partner, as a mom, as a daughter, as a friend.

These are the things that are either things that I’ve worked on and I’ve gotten pretty good at or things that I need to work on, which I will share more about as we go along. But my number one. physical—I would argue physical, mental, and emotional, if we wanna go that deep—the number one thing that I need in my life is sleep.

Sleep, sleep , sleep. I love sleep. If I could, I’d sleep all day. I’m a big fan of a nap. I’m a big fan of sleeping in, and if I don’t get enough sleep or I get really poor sleep, I get sick. I get headaches, I get nauseous, I get nauseated, whatever. I get like, body aches, like I feel like crap. I’m super crabby. I have a very short temper. Like, it is just not good for anyone involved.

It is not good at all, and I would hazard a guess that a lot of us don’t get enough sleep or good quality sleep. Sleep is hard. I mean, we’ve got busy lives and lots of things going on, and it’s not a super simple, quick fix usually to get better sleep, but I wanna discuss a few things that could help you.

Number one, if possible, investigate if you have, or if you suspect you have, a sleeping disorder or sleep apnea or something like that. I know insurance in the US is ugh. I was fortunate enough that I was able to get a sleep study and discovered that I have mild sleep apnea, but only if I sleep on my back. So I had a CPAP machine.

Luckily, I didn’t end up needing it ’cause it just wasn’t a good fit. But all I have to do now is lay my side, and I shove a pillow behind my back so that I can’t really roll over. Like when I’m sleeping and my body feels that pillow, it’s like, whoop, can’t go that far, gotta go back.

That fixed that part. Of course other people have more moderate or severe sleep apnea, and that’s a whole situation with your doctor and all of that. But if you suspect you have something like that, to your ability, try to figure out what that is and how you can take steps to fixing it or adjusting to it, and then making your environment as conducive to restful sleep as you can.

I know there’s tons of things out there. Some help some people while they irritate others. So you’re gonna have to find what works for you. But there’s fans and white noise machines and you know, different blankets and weighted blankets. And I have a cooling blanket ’cause I get hot and, you know, I listen to a sleep story every night, and there’s blackout curtains, or maybe there’s a nightlight if you need a nightlight.

Like, you know, there’s so many things. There could be roommates or pets, or you share walls with others. Oh, I hear you so hard for those things. I used to live below someone who had a beagle who no joke would howl when the owner was gone, which was 7am to 6pm every day. No walks. Don’t ask me why this owner thought that the dog wouldn’t have to go to the bathroom during the day.

And I felt so bad for him, but this dog would howl all day, all day, and they had no carpets upstairs and it was hardwood floors and his nails would click-clack everywhere at the crack of dawn and the middle of the night. And I’m like, oh, and I can’t control that. Right? We did talk to him. He was a moron that went nowhere.

So we did earplugs and we turned up our white noise machine and we used to watch TV all night or, you know, have the TV on just to try and drown it out. And there was a lot of “you can only control what you can control” mantras. So, you know, I get things that are outside of our control. We just have to try and do the best we can.

And it’s a tough situation, right? If you are a parent listening to this and you’re in that phase where your kids are preventing you from getting good sleep, oh, I hear you too. I know moms aren’t supposed to say this, and of course it’s always the moms ’cause you know, we get blamed for everything, but the newborn stage, I hated it.

I really hated it because there was no sleep, and I just, again, I don’t do good without good sleep. And it’s, you know, you’ve got a newborn and you’ve got all of these things with your body and, you know, figuring out what you’re doing and then on top of it, you’re sleep deprived. There’s a reason why sleep deprivation is torture.

It’s survival mode. So if you’re in that phase, you’re gonna do the absolute best you can and it will be good enough. You are going to not make big changes. You’re going to do whatever means necessary to get that extra minute or thirty seconds of sleep you can, and know that it does get better. But I just wanna give you a shout-out ’cause I recognize the struggle and I hear you and it’s tough.

Same with people who get a new pet like puppies and kittens and animals that need to be, you know, trained and are acclimated to their new environment. That’s hard. It’s so hard.

Another thing with sleep, which will be of no shock to probably all of you, is to stop the doomscrolling, or even the joyscrolling. Put the phone away. And I have zero business saying this because if you’ve listened to the podcast, you know my struggles with my phone. I’m starting to have the struggle again too, with being on holiday break. I’m like, I’m gonna get into bed on time and then like, well, I’m just gonna check Instagram real quick. And then an hour later goes by and I’m like, what are you doing?

I’m even contemplating getting one of those Bricks that like, is a physical thing that you move away from yourself so that you can’t get into these apps because it’s, ugh, it’s ridiculous and out of control. But scrolling is not conducive to good sleep. We know this, right? We know this, and yet we still do it. But if you wanna join me on trying to fix that, I’d be super into having some accountability because it’s gotta change.

Okay. Moving on from the phone, drinking your water. Water’s good. Have a water bottle at your desk or your workstation or wherever you’re at. We can make a habit around making yourself drink the water ’cause yes, you can have a water bottle at your desk, but it’s not gonna be helpful if you don’t drink it. And we’ll talk about that in a little bit with creating the Tiny Habits. But whatever you can do to get the water in you: if you need to put some flavoring in it, if you need to put some lemon or lime or cucumbers or fruit, make it fizzy, put it in a fun glass.

I’ve been doing that. I got a fun glass I got at T.J.Maxx years ago and a fun straw makes me wanna drink it a little bit more. Then, you know, just a glass, do whatever you gotta do, but drink the water. It’s wild how much dehydration can affect you and you don’t even realize it, and you’re like, oh, I just have to drink more water. Whoops. So drink your water.

Now, this one is very specific to me and what I put in the content warning about, but I know that by now at the ripe old age of forty-one, I know that when I eat certain things, they make me feel like crap. And when I eat other things, they make me feel good. And yet still like, I eat the things that don’t make me feel good.

So in my house, just a quick note, we don’t say healthy or unhealthy because that’s just not how we roll. We say if a food gives us quick energy or if it gives us lots of energy. So for example, if my daughter is going to gymnastics and wants a snack, we’ll be like, okay, none of this food is good or bad. It’s just food. But you’re gonna be doing a lot of physical, you know. exercise. You’re gonna be jumping and twirling and flipping and all of that. Will the package of cookies give you long-lasting energy, or will the apple and string cheese give you lots of energy? That’s how we pose it. I don’t know if that’s right or wrong, but it’s what seems to work for us.

But it’s also what I think to myself because I don’t wanna think of things as healthy and unhealthy. I want food to be neutral. It’s just how it makes my body feel. And I’m not good lately with eating the foods that make my body feel good. And a lot of the times it’s because I don’t prep, especially for snacks and lunches. Working from home, you know, you’re in it, you’re working, you’re busy, you wanna get stuff done, so I’ll just grab something quick. And usually when that is the case, it’s something not great. That is quick energy.

I need to take more time to prep, like on a Sunday. Take, I mean, it doesn’t have to take hours, you know, you see some of these people out there that take like six hours to meal prep. I don’t have time for that, nor do I want to do that. But if you do, that’s great.

I bought these little snack pack things because I wanna put like a hard-boiled egg and some crackers and hummus, and then all I have to do is open the fridge and grab it. I don’t have to get out the or make the hard-boiled eggs. I did that ahead of time. I don’t have to get out the hummus and get a spoon to scoop out the hummus and get out the crackers, like it’s all done and ready to go.

That’s gonna be something that I’m gonna try and do better with here in the near future because it’s small, but it makes a big impact. And I need to make better choices so my stomach doesn’t hurt all the time. And I’m not saying that this all has to be like $400 organic, grass-fed stuff. Like, real talk, we don’t eat anything organic. But it’s making just a slightly better choice for you.

So for example, if I’m hungry, I would go upstairs and if I didn’t prep ahead of time or think about what I wanted to eat, I would just grab like a handful of M&M’s. M&M’s aren’t bad. M&M’s are delicious. But I know that very sugary food is gonna make me feel like crap. So how about I grab a can of nuts at the grocery store and I either grab the handful of nuts instead, or I mix the two and make a little trail mix. That’s a better choice. Is it earth shattering? Is it going to magically fix all of my physical ailments? No, but it’s a small, impactful change. So think about stuff like that for you. What is applicable to you and what small changes you can make that will then just keep compounding and getting better and better. 

Another real quick thing is because I hit forty everybody is like, oh, now you need protein, which don’t even get me started on the health trends that target women. But if you’re over forty, it’s protein, right? You gotta eat all this cottage cheese. Every fricking recipe has a cottage cheese base. And I like cottage cheese. I don’t wanna eat it every day, nor do I wanna eat it in everything in my life. But I do know that when I eat protein, I feel fuller longer.

If I have something not filling for breakfast, that’s when I start snacking and grabbing junk. So in the morning, I know that I need to eat a protein-rich breakfast, but in order to do that, I have to plan ahead, and that’s where that prepping comes into place. So the prepping for me is what’s gonna be a focus. You choose if anything is your focus. Maybe you’re great at breakfast and lunches, but maybe your dinners are a struggle.

Or maybe you’re eating the M&M’ss and maybe you should be having the nuts. Or if you have a nut allergy, please pick something else. But, you know, pick what is gonna work for you that’s small to start, okay? We’re not overhauling the entire thing of what we eat. Every single thing is gonna get changed? Recipe for disaster. It’s not gonna be sustainable.

So in addition to that, one of the other things that I’m really gonna be focusing on is my movement of my body. For lots of reasons I won’t get into, it has become very apparent that I am not moving as much as I should be. I sit a lot, I sit at my desk a lot, I sit on the couch a lot.

You know, it’s the winter here, it’s cold. I love sitting on the couch wrapped in my blanket, reading my book with my fake fireplace. Like, I love it. There’s nothing wrong with any of that, but I need to balance it a little bit with moving. Not running a marathon, I hate running, hate it. If you see me running you know to run because something bad has happened. I’m not running for fun, folks, but I’m talking about I need to just stretch some more, maybe do some Pilates or yoga, get my butt outside and get some fresh air and have a stupid mental health walk. You know, things like that. Of course, again, I know I’m a broken record here, but take into account your situation and your abilities.

I mean, it’s rotating our wrists and ankles. It’s stretching our neck and shoulders, relaxing our jaws and our forehead, like all of this stuff, but moving our body in the ways that work for us. And I’m not talking about January going and buying the gym membership and the personal trainer and all the workout clothes because this is your year that you’re gonna quote get healthy or whatever, and then come February you’re done. That’s very normal. Again, very natural.

We know that gyms have shared that January is super busy and then February is dead. It’s because we’re relying on motivation, and we cannot rely on motivation to change our habits. It’s just not reliable. So as everything, our movement, if we wanna focus on our movement it’s gonna be tiny. Again, stay tuned for that.

And with this is posture. Oof. Because of the sitting we do at our desks or tables or what have you, a lot of us don’t have good posture. I don’t; it’s terrible. It’s so bad. And when you’re cognizant of it, you realize how bad it could be. We’re not meant to sit all day, you know, humans weren’t meant to sit at a desk all day.

It’s normal now, and it’s, you know, I don’t know how to fully change it other than having a standing desk or, you know, sitting on an exercise ball or all those things. But we’re still gonna be sitting quite a bit, or we’re sitting on the couch. So do what you can within your ability. Stretch when you can.

Make sure your head and neck aren’t jutted forward. I do that a lot. You’re supposed to like, tuck your chin in, like make it a double chin, which my chin like, totally disappears and I hate doing it, but it feels really good. And something that is kind of funny, but when I have new editors ask what they need to invest in when they’re starting out, we all know you need a laptop or a desktop, you need the internet, you need Microsoft Word, you know, there’s normal things. But I would also include a decent office chair. Does it need to be $8,000? No. But if you’re going to be sitting in it as much as you are,most likely, it needs to be as comfortable and as ergonomic as possible.

Because if you get a junky chair, or you’re sitting at your dining room table (ask me how I know) that is not meant to be sat in for hours, it’s gonna kill your butt and your back and your neck and your shoulders, like all of that. It’s just, it’s not gonna be good. It’s not gonna be good. So invest in as good of an office chair as you can at the time and your body will thank you. It really will. 

And I don’t wanna be alarmist here, but I do wanna share this ’cause I think it’s important. Back when I first started editing, I was working with another editor who developed a blood clot in their leg because they were sitting too much. They were, I mean, they were on an editing spree for a long time. Like I’m talking months here, and they developed a leg clot, and that’s dangerous. We don’t want that. So, move, move, move. It doesn’t have to be a marathon. You know, move your legs, twist your ankles—not twist them, but rotate ’em. Please don’t break your ankle or twist it. Just do whatever you can.

And then back into our bodies is our eyesight. Our eyes are kind of important. Take care of them however that is for you. Most of you know by my pictures I wear glasses because the LASIK that I got at eighteen wore off and I needed them again. And I have contacts, but they don’t really like, my eye shape is not the same and they bug me.

I’m gonna try and wear them a little bit more and get used to ’em. But glasses is the way I have to go. Glare is atrocious at night. Like I take care of my eyes, but my eyes aren’t the best. Sometimes I wear blue-light glasses on top of my regular glasses. It is a look, let me tell you, but it helps, and any little thing is helpful.

If I stare at my screen too long, I get really bad headaches. Like, if I’m on an editing deadline crunch, when I’m done, I’m like, oh my God, that was not ideal. Like my eyes hurt, my head hurts, my neck hurts. Everything hurts. It’s not good. You know, make sure that you’re not two inches from your screen.

I will fully admit that my Word docs that I edit are at 220% magnification. I know that’s ridiculous, but it’s what works for me, so it’s what I’m gonna do. You know, take breaks when you’re editing. Look off into the distance, close your eyes for a bit. Dim your computer screen light if you can. One of the great things about working from home is that we don’t have to work under those awful office fluorescent lights.

Turn the lights off if you can, or light a candle or dim the lights or you know, I have a salt lamp that I love, like it glows, it’s so pretty, the vibe, right? But it’s much better on my eyes than, you know, bright overhead tube lighting.

And last but not least, we’re gonna talk about breathing. Yes, we all breathe. Hopefully. If you’re listening to this, hopefully you’re breathing, but many of us forget to breathe deeply during the day. We, you know, we just breathe without realizing it. But I deal with anxiety, which I’ve shared, and so breathing is a very central part of me keeping my nervous system under control. So if I get anxious or if I start to get, you know, oh my gosh, you gotta hit this deadline, or oh, I gotta do this and I gotta do this, and I have such a big to-do list, that’s when we start having shorter breaths, which is not good.

Makes your heart rate go up, you know, makes you feel like crap. So taking the time to take those deep cleansing breaths during the day makes a big impact, and it’s easy, right? Quote, easy. But we forget to do it. And so I’m gonna share more of that in a sec. I know I keep saying that, but I promise it’s coming.

Okay. So what I talked about was mostly physical. There was some environmental in there, but I wanted to make sure that I hit the point about your living and workspace a little bit separately. I know we talked about roommates and sharing walls and stuff like that, but one of the benefits of being a freelancer is that to an extent, we get to control where we work and live and what our space looks like.

If we’re working from home, we don’t have a ton of delineation between work and home, right? For a long time I didn’t have an office, so I just would work at the, what’s it called? The bar in my kitchen, whatever it’s called—peninsula. And then I created an office. But now I work in our, I guess it’s a basement.

It’s a split level. I have a corner of the basement. My husband has the corner behind me, and then the rest of the downstairs is a playroom. So there’s a bunch of toys and you know, stuff. But even that I’ve found is very helpful because all of my quote work stuff is in this office. You know, my computer and my mic and my books, my bookshelf is behind me.

You know, my paperwork, my office supplies, like all of that stuff is here. So that when I’m done for the day, I can physically walk out of the work part of the house and be in, you know, home mode in the rest of my house. That’s not to say I don’t switch it up and work from my couch or work from my bed, like, you know, you gotta have some variety sometimes.

But not having my work crap spread out all over the house really helps because I don’t want that reminder. If I’m sitting and hanging out with my kids, I don’t want my laptop nearby. That might not bother you, but it bugs me. Or I don’t want my work to-do list around if I’m in family time, so I like to keep things separate.

That can be different for you. It doesn’t have to be a corner or a full room. I would love to have an office with a door. Ugh. It like, that’s my dream again. But in this house, it’s not gonna happen. And I’m never leaving this house because housing is expensive. And yeah, so we deal with, you know, we make it work with what we have.

And then I mentioned, you know, the neighbors and the roommates and all of that. I am not saying, well just move because that is extremely ignorant and presumptuous. And I hate it when people say that. Like, moving is so simple. No, it’s not. But if you have a physical environment that you’re not super fond of, it could be earplugs, it could be setting boundaries, or it could be looking into the possibility of changing your living situation. Maybe it’s something you wrote off a long time ago because it wasn’t possible, but who knows? Maybe it is possible now, but you just haven’t looked. Run the numbers. Look at it from your current perspective.

You never know what could happen. Maybe it’s not feasible right now, but maybe with some tweaks or some, you know, maybe if you made a little bit extra money this year, maybe it could be possible. And if not, it’s something to know so that when you’re taking on clients and you’re, you know, building your business, it’s in the back of your mind. Like, oh, remember when you ran those numbers and you figured out that I need X amount of money to move out on my own? Is this client gonna help me get to that? Or is this client gonna be a total pain and not get me to my goals? You know what I mean? So it’s good to have that worked out and in the back of your mind when you’re doing that.

Okay. Now has come the part that I’ve been teasing this whole time. Not really teasing ’cause gross, but I wanted to get all of that out and then share how do we actually start incorporating these changes. I’ve mentioned this before. I’m a Tiny Habits Certified Coach. I know every single one of us has decided to change something, tweak something.

A lot of us do it at the beginning of the year. We all go in hard right off the bat, and then it fades out because we’re depending on that motivation. So what we do instead is we create habits. Particularly Tiny Habits because biting off more than we can chew is just going to not work. We know it. We know it’s not going to work for most of us.

Maybe some of you out there can go hard and continue to go hard and never have an issue with motivation. Kudos to you, like seriously. But for me, it doesn’t work. And then I feel shame and guilt and that really doesn’t work. So I do the tiny thing. Tiny. Tiny. Tiny.

So let’s do an example. Let’s say that one of the things you wanna do is you wanna take more deep breaths like we talked about. So you’re not going to go, all right, every day I’m gonna take fifty deep breaths. You’re not gonna do it. I guarantee you you’re not gonna do it. Instead, we’re gonna create a Tiny Habits Recipe, and that template is, “After I blank, I will blank.” So here’s an example. Say you’re editing. You could do: After I finish editing a chapter, I will take one deep breath.

Notice I didn’t say five deep breaths, ten deep breaths, two chapters, whatever. We’re talking tiny. Now, if you’re editing a book that has, you know, fifty-page chapters, tweak it. We’re always tweaking it to what works. But maybe your chapters are three pages. That’s kind of nice. Every three pages take a deep breath.

Or you might be like, yeah, that’s way too much breathing, dude, I need a break. Figure something else out. Right? Maybe you use the Pomodoro method where you work for twenty-five minutes and then the timer goes off and then you take a break. Maybe you’re going to say, “After the timer goes off, I’ll take a deep breath.”

So then you’re taking a deep breath every twenty-five minutes. Or maybe it has nothing to do with work, and you say, “After I go to the bathroom, I’ll take a deep breath.” We all have to do that. That’s a prompt we all have to do. That works. You get the picture, but you’re going to pick something that you actually want to work on and then find where it could easily fit into your day.

And the key here is easy. If it’s hard, you’re not going to do it. One more example, this is one that I had to incorporate ’cause I kept forgetting. “After I make my morning coffee, I’ll take my vitamins.” And I put my vitamins right next to my coffee machine. It makes no sense. Like my coffee machine is there, you know, my accoutrements, like my syrups and my cinnamon and all of that.

And then it’s my vitamins because if I said “After I make my morning coffee, I’ll take my vitamins,” but my vitamins are in the bathroom, that makes it harder. Why would I do that to myself? Just put the vitamins right there. So then I know as soon as my coffee is done, I pick up my vitamin thingy and I pop ’em out and I take ’em with my coffee.

I don’t know if you’re supposed to take vitamins with coffee, but we’re gonna gloss over that. You get the picture. Make it easy, make it in the same room, the same area, make it be semi-related. You know, you’re not gonna be like, “After I make my morning coffee, I’m going to run a mile.” That doesn’t make sense, you know? So make it applicable, make it easy. Easy is not bad. Easy is good.

So there we have it. This is just the kickoff of a longer conversation we’re going to be having about taking care of ourselves in a variety of different ways. This was physical and environmental, but we’re gonna talk about mental and emotional and financial and all the things because we have big things we wanna accomplish, right?

We have businesses we wanna run and grow, and we have people we wanna help and we have families to raise and like, we wanna do good things, right? And the only way to do that, in order to make that happen, is to be our best selves, and that means taking care of ourselves. It’s not changing twenty things overnight.

It’s not making these big, extravagant changes. It’s small, intentional steps towards our goals and what we wanna change. I highly recommend reading Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg if you really wanna get into creating Tiny Habits. Also, it doesn’t take twenty-eight days for a habit to form. Complete myth. I can talk to you about that all day.

And then if you really wanna get into habits I’ve gone through BJ’s intensive coaching program. I got coaching directly from him. I know how to make Tiny Habits and I know how to help you make Tiny Habits that work and that are very specific to your needs. So if you’re ever interested, you can give me a shout at Hello@TaraWhitaker.com and we can make that happen.

So until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and remember that tiny is powerful and it works. 

Thank you so much for tuning in to today’s episode. If you enjoy The Modern Editor Podcast, I would be so grateful if you left a review over on Apple Podcasts or wherever you consume podcasts. And don’t forget, you can head to TaraWhitaker.com to connect with me and stay in touch. We’ll chat again soon.