Social and Intellectual Wellness For Freelance Editors

Welcome back to the podcast. This is our fourth and final episode in our self-care/wellness series for freelance editors. The first topic we covered physical and environmental wellness. The second was about all things financial. The third was mental and emotional well-being. And this fourth and final episode is going to be about social and intellectual wellness.

And just like the other episodes, this one could bring up some thoughts and emotions for you. So please remember to take care of yourself while listening. 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. So today we are wrapping up our series on wellness for freelance editors, and we’re gonna be chatting about intellectual and social well-being. I’ve touched on both of these in previous episodes, but I wanted to make sure that I dedicated specific time to each of these very important topics.

And I know social wellness or well-being gets talked about quite a lot. Yes, I talk about it a lot because it relates closely to community, but the intellectual portion I find it doesn’t get talked about a whole lot, although it is getting talked about more with the, we’ll call it “emergence” of generative AI in the past few years, and I firmly believe it needs to be discussed.

So that’s what we’re gonna do today. My plan is to talk about both social and intellectual wellness for freelance editors and how you can be more aware of both while you’re running your business. And if these don’t end up being a priority for you or not a priority at the moment, then I at least wanna give you some things to think about in the future.

And just like with all the other episodes, I’m not gonna be able to address every single thing under these topics. This is meant to be a conversation starter. There might be things that aren’t applicable to you, so take what works, tweak it if you can, and leave the rest.

All right, so let’s kick off with the social well-being aspect. Now, for me, one of the perks—one of the best perks—I find of being a freelance editor, and maybe you feel this way as well, is the fact that we get to work solo. I love it. I love being in my own space with my own stuff. Doing my own thing, like that is my jam. I don’t know if I could ever go back to a corporate or office environment again and be next to people who are clipping their nails, which I’ve had happen, or eating a dozen hard-boiled eggs, which I’ve had happen, or multiple other stories that I’m not even gonna get into.

Love, love, love doing that solo work that’s just like, me and my brain and my computer and the internet and my resources and boom, like, love it. And yet at the same time, because two things can be true at once, we can’t do life alone. It’s not possible. We still need people. That’s how we were like, built and created. 

And I’ve talked about this a ton with community, so I’m not gonna rehash everything that I’ve already mentioned, but I do just wanna reiterate the importance of social interaction. Our businesses and just as human beings personally, I know I talk about this as much as I do because I know I would be so much further along in my business and with my personal growth had I made community and relationships a priority in the beginning of my business.

I’ve talked about this before, but I’ve had, or I did have a negative interaction, shall we say, in a Facebook group at the start of my editing business journey. It made me retreat for years. Like, I just was like, I’m not talking to people. They are mean and rude and gatekeepery and I don’t like it. And that was not the right call. And I still feel like I’m playing catch-up fourteen years later. Like, I feel like I should know more people and I should like, I feel like I just, I should be more immersed in the community and the industry and I’m not, and I don’t want any of that for you.

So the social interaction is necessary, and it’s to the level that you can handle, of course, and that you’re comfortable with, while also remembering that we do need to push ourselves outside of our comfort zone when it’s safe to do so. We grow in the, you know, in the uncomfortableness. Please remember, uncomfortable and unsafe are very different, and you are the one to make that call.

But from my experience, when I am just chilling happily in my little comfort zone, and I don’t have to stretch myself or push myself, I’m just chilling. I’m not growing, really. And that can be fine at points, that’s totally fine, but if you’re looking to grow or looking to expand or learn something or meet new people, we gotta get outta that comfort zone.

And if we’re gonna do that, what better pool of people to pull from than other freelance editors, right? Or if you wanna really expand the pool, just other freelancers or solo business owners. We all get it. We’re all alone to some degree. And we all need friends and colleagues and mentors and you know, we know what it’s like.

We live the same, you know, not the same life, of course, but most likely, we have similar traits, we have similar interests. I guarantee you can find another freelance editor that likes the things you like or has the same living situation or focuses on the same content or serves the same client, or you know, there is something there most likely that can make it a little bit easier to make friends.

It can be virtual, it can be in person. It can deal with business or editing or be something adjacent like, you know, a book club or something. Or it can be about a hobby or maybe you both, or all of you however many there are, like traveling to a certain place or you live in a certain place. Like, you get the idea. There’s lots of options.

But it is also related to your marketing. How I teach marketing broadly is by building meaningful relationships. I don’t focus on transactional like, one-and-done shallow-type things. There are certainly editors that excel at that or prefer that. That’s great. There’s definitely different content that that would be okay for. Since I edit books that’s not the vibe I’m going for. Books are so personal and involved and you know, there’s a lot of emotions attached to it, and feedback is crucial, and it’s just something that requires more care. And that’s why I talk about building relationships as opposed to, you know, doing some like, I don’t know, one-off transactional thing. 

It is going to take time. It is a slow method. But in my experience and viewing other editors’ experiences, it’s the most fruitful in many, many ways. It’s the most enriching, it follows a lot of people’s values. It ends up being like, repeat clients and word of mouth, which is powerful. All of that.

I mean, just think about it: if you were hiring someone to do something as intimate as editing your book, would you be more inclined to hire like, a total rando online, or would you like to book someone who maybe they were a total rando online but then you started talking to them and maybe you read their blog posts or maybe they had a podcast or maybe they have social media things, posts, and you start talking to them.

Like, that is the kind of thing that I gravitate more toward than just randos. That’s just me. Obviously you get to choose the methods and strategies that you use, but I have found that relationships are the most rewarding in many, many ways.

And one thing I have to mention, I just got back from a business retreat, and I’m gonna share way more about that in a future episode, but we talked about how powerful this one question can be. And we sort of laughed about it at first, but then we started taking it a little more seriously about how it really is true. And that question is: “Will you be my friend?” 

Now, I don’t know about you, but as an adult, making friends is far more difficult. You know, I watch my kids make friends and it’s so easy and effortless and they put no like—there’s no anxiety or nervousness with it. It’s just like, hey, let’s play on the playground and now we’re best friends. And it’s just, it’s so beautiful. That’s not usually how it is as an adult.

And so I’m just gonna throw that question out there, because if you meet someone and you vibe with them, just ask, “Will you be my friend?” Why not? One of my good friends for the past decade came from her asking me that question in an email. We worked at the same publishing company and she was moving to my city, so she was like, “Hey, number one, something about the publishing company, number two, will you be my friend?” And I was like, uh, abso-fricking-lutely.

And we’re still friends. I’ve asked that of people before and they laugh, but they’re like, yes, please. Because it’s such a vulnerable thing to say that it’s hard to ignore and it’s hard to not be like, oh yeah, I’ll be your friend. I mean, it can pan out. It could turn into, you know, a friendship like I have, or it could turn out to be like, you know, really gel afterwards or you just kind of, you know, fall outta touch or whatever.

That’s fine. But just putting it out there I think is funny and there is the possibility someone could say no. I probably wouldn’t wanna be their friend if they said that anyways. But that could sting for sure. Knowing me and my awkwardness, I would, I don’t know, I would either make a joke or who knows what I would do, but the likelihood of that happening is low.

So all that to say, social interactions, people, community, they are an important piece of our business. It usually is only to our benefit. We need more community. We need more people talking to each other and not just talking to each other to respond kind of a situation. There’s my plug for social wellness.

Now let’s move on to intellectual, and this one’s gonna be a little interesting. I’m gonna try really hard not to get on a soapbox. I’m not making promises, though. Okay. Intellectual wellness. What I mean by intellectual in this context is critical thinking, common sense, stimulating your brain, curiosity, creativity, being open to new ideas.

I don’t know if this is technically part of intellectual, but I kind of associate it with things like being able to stay engaged with something and focus on something. I kind of just mentioned this before, but the ability to listen to hear someone and not to respond, those are very different things.

That is what I’m talking about when I say intellectual. And editing is an extremely rewarding profession if you like using your brain and researching and learning and going down rabbit holes and all of those things. And reading gives us those benefits too.

Just a shout-out, but I think it’s more important than ever to be educated and engage in intellectually stimulating things. And I wanna be clear, when I say important to be educated, I’m not saying getting a PhD or, I don’t know, creating like, mathematical equations or something like that. Like something that when you think intellectual, you think of certain things probably.

And I also tend to think of these high, you know, rocket scientists and stuff. That’s not what I’m going for. I am not saying you need to go get an advanced degree or anything. I don’t have an advanced degree. I am talking about the ability to, let’s say, read something, determine if it’s factual or not, research your sources, and come to your own conclusions.

How does that relate to editing? Well, it’s a huge part of copyediting. If you’re a copyeditor, depending on the content you work with, you don’t necessarily need to be checking mathematical equations. I don’t, I edit fiction, but what I need to do is if I’m reading a historical romance, I need to make sure that if they mention a certain invention or something, that that invention was actually created during that time period.

Or one of my favorite ones that I refer back to a lot is I was reading a book that mentioned the car that was in the cargo hold of the Titanic. And because I love Titanic and because I’m a copyeditor, I was like, okay, I gotta make sure that this car was a thing in 1912. It wasn’t; it wasn’t built until years later. It was a totally different model car. I had to learn, I had to figure that out. I had to research it. I had to come up with my own conclusion and be like, hey, per this legitimate source, this is not accurate. It’s determining if certain words or phrases are used in a time period that your book is set. You know, there’s so many things like that.

That is what I mean by being educated and doing intellectual things. I feel like these abilities are becoming more rare and less important to some people, and I firmly disagree. I think it’s even more important and will continue to be more important.

And this is the part that I’m gonna try not to get on my soapbox. Remember, we’re talking about intellectual wellness and why that’s important to us because I’m making an assumption here, but I’m assuming that you need your brain to be intellectually stimulated. That’s why you’re an editor, or partially why you’re an editor. So this is why this relates.

This is why I get confused when I see the push for generative AI because it’s going against one of the biggest perks of the job, and that is being intellectually stimulating. I love a good monotonous task too. Let me just throw this out there. Love an intellectual task like copyediting. Love a good monotonous task.

When you turn on the TV and you got something on in the background and you’re doing something repetitive that doesn’t take a lot of brain work. I love that. I love it so much, and I think I love it because I’m usually doing such taxing brain work that my brain does need a break, but it still needs to be doing something.

I could, you know, do a hobby or watch TV or read a book. Of course, those are all great options, but if I need to be somewhat stimulated, a monotonous task is good. We’re getting to the point now where it’s like, anything that can be outsourced should be outsourced, and if you’re not outsourcing it, you’re wasting your time because, you know, capitalism faster, harder, better in the name of productivity, and I just, I can’t get behind it.

Maybe I’ll change my mind in the future, who knows? But right now I just can’t. And the whole concept of being encouraged to outsource our brains and intellectual wellness in the name of productivity and efficiency but at the expense of critical thinking and the ability to problem solve, which is what makes us good editors. I just get confused. I don’t know.

It’s just, we’re not getting the same satisfaction as using our brains, and I think it’s a slippery slope. It starts with, well, I’m just gonna have generative AI do this one thing I don’t wanna do and I’m not good at. And then it’s like, whoa, then I can make it do this and I can make it do this.

And then we’re, you know, we’re just going down a rabbit hole and not a good rabbit hole. And if we don’t use something, we lose it. Right? I don’t know about you, but the thought of losing my ability to think critically and problem solve terrifies the poop out of me. Right? That scares me and it scares me that, you know, some of us listening are raising kids and what are they gonna be exposed to and how are they gonna be taught to think critically?

Are they gonna be taught to just throw something into generative AI? Like, ugh, I don’t know. And I don’t like operating from a place of terror or fear or being left out. Like I think that’s such a BS scare tactic. I cannot even, and I’m not saying to not use the internet and, you know, ban electricity, you know, become a complete Luddite unless you want to, you know, there’s limits.

But anything that substitutes my brain freaks me out. And I’m just gonna throw one thing out there, ’cause I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. When I say uneducated, I mean not being able to do those things that I mentioned. The critical thinking, the problem solving.

Do you know who loves uneducated folks? Fascists. Authoritarians. We lose the ability to think for ourselves we’re in for a world of hurt. Just throwing that out there.

So as editors who use our brains every day, those are our superpower. Our brains are our superpower. We are in a profession that respects deep thinking, critical thinking, creativity, nuance, originality.

You know, let’s just keep that in mind moving forward. Just keep it in mind because I want us all to remember why we do what we do, why we are editors, why it is a profession that works for us, why we enjoy it, what about it makes us enjoy it? And then assessing the tools that we use and seeing if that is in alignment with what we just came up with.

And we make those decisions for ourselves. And only we can do that for our businesses, which is amazing and empowering, but can also be difficult. So food for thought, right?

Okay, there we have it. My thoughts on social and intellectual wellness. As with all the other episodes, take some time to marinate if you need to. I might have said some things that brought up emotions for you. Maybe I just ticked you off. That’s valid. That’s okay. You’re allowed to be mad. We can have differing opinions. Totally fine. Just take care of yourself.

And I hope this entire series has helped at least get you thinking about all the different aspects of wellness and well-being that play a part in our freelance editing businesses. You know, it’s more than picking a name and the logo and the colors and the website and the marketing.

Like, yes, those are all things we need to do, but we need to be thinking more about the human aspect of it as well, because at the core of our business is us, ourselves, and if we don’t take care of ourselves, the business is going to be affected whether we like it or not.

And all of these things we’ve talked about in the series play a part in our well-being could be to different degrees at different parts of our life or seasons of life, but they all play a role and it’s up to you to keep track of what is important to you or a priority at the current moment, and then maybe pivoting to something else.

Maybe it’s, you know, you’ve really got some financial things going on, so that’s gonna be your priority. Great. But also keep in mind, you know, your physical well-being, your mental well-being, all those other things. Now you know that all of those things come together to make you, you and in extension your business.

So if you have any questions at all about anything we’ve talked about in the series or anything at all, really, if something resonated with you, if you wanna tell me if something made you mad, if you have ideas for future episodes, please let me know. You can always email me at Hello@TaraWhitaker.com. I’m more than happy to answer anything you wanna know.

So until next time, keep learning, keep growing, and remember that you are a complex human being and you deserve to take care of yourself.

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.