Free…..lancing

“Will you freelance?” they asked. And the alternative, I wondered. Saying you’re unemployed? Thank god it’s an option. Freelancing. Lancing that free time, draining those hours and minutes I might otherwise struggle to fill. Except I haven’t had much free time in the last eight years. There’s been the maternity leaves, yes, but never Time, not to myself, not really.

Even when they were sleeping, I could never believe they wouldn’t wake up. And so, I’d walk and walk, in the winter chill of DC, and the late autumn heat of Jerusalem, only it was harder to keep going there with number two, what with dragging his three-year-old brother behind me on his trusty green scooter. Later, with Etta, I’d relish my London walks on the rare days we had together, the boys otherwise occupied at school and nursery. With her, I’d fill my head with the sounds of podcasts: Serial, to start with. Then endless Desert Island Discs. But I’d always be thinking about her, the baby who was always about to stir.

Now that I have nowhere to be for the three days I’m nominally working – truly, nowhere, because the house is full of a toddler and her nanny – my mind dreams of the things I’d like to do with my time. The yoga, the swimming, the unbooked massages. But what about my inner guilt, the voice chiding me for missing all the writing commissions going to my fellow freelancers?

I make a call. “I’m a freelance journalist,” I say to the person on the other end of the phone. That’s what they hear. Me? That I’m homeless. I wonder how often I’ll forget and tell people I’m from the Independent? Now I’m just independent. I hope I can like it.