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When headlines loom with warnings of potential climate peril, or you hear of a problem with pollution or toxic chemicals somewhere around the world, it can feel hard to overcome and have any kind of impact.

Choosing to do something rather than nothing can be a powerful feeling of strength, especially if you’re feeling the weight of the world’s problems. Here are seven choices you can make today that will do your part to positively impact the environment. When we make small changes and sustain them long-term, we make a very positive impact.

Eat More Meatless Meals and Plan Food Strategically

Research shows that raising meat for human consumption makes a major carbon emissions impact, but there is good news. You don’t have to give up meat entirely to reduce your impact, though of course, it doesn’t hurt! By trying a few days a week without meat, substituting in plant-based proteins, you can lower the total impact per pound of food you eat as far as CO2 emissions are concerned. Also, planning just a little more carefully so that no food ends up in the rubbish bin is a way to save on emissions. Millions of pounds of food are wasted every year mostly because people didn’t know exactly how much everyone would eat at a given event or in a normal meal, and making the choice to effectively use leftovers and waste very little has a powerful impact.

Use Less Water and Reuse What You Can

Whether you run dishes less often, make sure every load of laundry is full, or take fewer and shorter showers, reducing how much water you use can be a powerful way to save the resources that are used to purify drinking water in your community. Creative individuals also focus on how they can reuse water, using things like rain barrels to save water and use it to water plants in a garden rather than using purified water for this task. Becoming aware of your water usage can sometimes be enough to consciously reduce your consumption.

Evaluate Renewable Energy Incentives and Participate

In many parts of the world, there are tax breaks and government incentives to participate in more sustainable, energy-efficient living, whether it be how electricity can come from solar panels or through high-efficiency home appliances. By noticing and choosing these programs, you save some money and also save on energy costs, long-term.

Creatively Reduce Fossil-Fuels Transportation Costs

Whether you aim to use public transportation rather than private cars or find ways to share your private car with others from your workplace or family, you can notice the next small step to reducing your CO2 emissions because of transportation. Learn more about energy-efficient means of travel, like traveling by train, and consider taking a longer “slow holiday” that has you travel efficiently rather than quickly flying places.

Avoid Single-Use Plastics

From carry-out containers to straws, plastic water bottles to bags for groceries, many of the plastic items in our lives are useful for only a few minutes before they are immediately tossed or recycled. While recycling can be a beneficial process for some items, single-use plastics are so prevalent that aiming to reduce their use is really the best way to stem the tide. Shop for reusable bags, containers, water bottles, and straws and carry them with you. The small change of carrying the things you need with you is as easy as the choice to carry one’s wallet and keys; making this change can save a variety of plastic items every day!

Use Electronics for Longer

This may seem like a pain, but electronic waste, or e-waste, contains many harmful chemicals that over time can leech out of the devices. If you can keep your phone or computer one more year rather than upgrading to the next exciting innovation, you are cutting down on the total amount of electronic waste in the world and reducing demand for rapidly-obsolete electronics. If you have the interest, consider learning how to upgrade a computer through additional components, or purchase a refurbished model that has had key elements replaced without throwing away an entire computer.

Create Small, Non-Polluting Diamonds as Memorials

Many of us want physical reminders of those we love the most, and this has been true for millennia; enormous mausoleums and monuments commemorate the amazing people that have been lost over the years.

However, in an age of reducing environmental impact, it makes sense to create small, low-energy-impact commemorations for those we care about. Turning pet or human remains into diamonds is a beautiful way to meaningfully keep a loved one close without having to invest in large-scale monuments that are expensive to upkeep and require land that must be maintained. Your Heart in Diamond jewellery is easy to ship without using excessive transportation resources. It allows you to prioritize quality and beauty, immortalizing the memory of a loved one. Even small choices, ones that don’t take away your quality of life, can have an amazing impact on the environment when we all do them together. Why not begin implementing some small changes and inviting our friends and family to join in? These small steps raise our consciousness and help us prepare the Earth for those who will come after us. These choices add meaning and purpose wh

It probably isn’t for everyone, but I found Amanda Palmer’s The Art of Asking incredibly enlightening. She has spent time in so many roles that require her to ask people to help her – she was a living statue in Harvard Square, for instance, but also a world-famous musician – that she’s developed a bit of a philosophy around how asking for things creates meaning in our lives.

I know there are other ways to create meaning, but this philosophy makes it a little easier to ask for work. After all, when you apply for jobs, you do a lot of asking at once, but once you have a full-time or part-time gig, you mostly do the work assigned to you. When freelancing or working on smaller contracts, you end up sending out asks (pitches! applications! other forms of vetting!) nearly every day.

I’ve developed a formula that allows me to reach out to people with whom I believe I can form a productive partnership. What has helped me is to realize that, if the fit is right, it’s not me asking them for a favor; it’s me proposing a mutually-beneficial solution. If the fit is wrong, well… I wasted very little of their time with a quick, concise ask.

Here’s how I structure a request for work (I typically end up using email, to avoid putting people on the spot; I don’t mind if their “response” is to ignore me, unless we had some pre-arranged discussion of the interaction; I want to waste as little of their time as possible).

1. I introduce who I am rapidly: name, profession, and verification. The verification, in my case, is usually three links to clips that are recent and relevant to whatever writing work I want to do for them. I don’t explain them; if they are interested in them, we can always discuss my clips later.
2. I tell them what I want: the faster you can do this, the better! If they requested pitches or applications, I give a quick summary of why I am a good fit (1 sentence, tops), then launch into the details of what I’d like to do. This is usually an arrangement (3 blog posts per month on sustainable farming) or a particular story (interviewing and profiling a local non-profit leader and why he/she is so influential).
3. If they have any requirements for the pitch (length, including certain outlined steps, talking about my access to sources), I make sure to incorporate those in organically.
4. I write, “let me know if you would be interested; I appreciate your time and consideration” or some variant of this same sentiment.
5. I sign my name.

It’s really that simple. Things I don’t include:

• Apologies of any kind for wasting their time, submitting something incorrectly, etc.
• Unless I’m really uncertain that the email is going to the right person, I don’t mention that they can forward it on; if there’s a better person, they’ll usually forward it on without me asking.
• Overly explaining myself; figure out what the best quick proof in your industry is of your competence, and use only that (could be a resume, could be clips/work examples). They can always ask for a portfolio or some other longer document if they are intrigued.
• Extensive summary of the piece. If the instructions say to do so, obviously, I will do this, but most of the time, the strength of a piece can come across in 2-3 sentences if the person already knows and works with you, and 4-5 sentences if you are breaking into a new topic. If your work is getting into the 6+ sentence range, write as much as you want but then edit it back to 5 sentences. You get the best stuff that way.

It doesn’t always work; I find that my best pitch acceptances come with some kind of “this was something we were just talking about” or “you have perfect timing,” which helps me realize that a really great pitch may simply not find its audience if the timing is off. But that doesn’t make the ask a bad ask; if you respect people’s time and ask for work honestly and straightforwardly, it will eventually come to you.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about careers, maybe because I spent between 5 and 9 years (depending on how much of my education you count as tied up in it) pursuing one career, and now I’ve gone in a different direction.

WorkLife with Adam Grant (one of my favorite podcasts, and a new season just launched!) discussed career “passion” lately, and I agree with a bunch of the points that are made there: you have to actually try different jobs or you won’t know what your passion really is, but one bad day doesn’t mean you haven’t found your passion. Also, they talk about developing passion rather than just following it or finding it, as if it is fully formed under a tree somewhere.

I was trying to think this morning about how I develop passion, and I was realizing that the conditions of work are often so much more important to me than the work itself.

For instance, I’ll pursue a writing client if some combination of the following are true:

• The work is doing interesting, positive things in the world.
• The timelines and deadlines for the work are sane and organized.
• The pay is at a level that makes me feel like a person being treated with dignity.
• There are a minimum of editorial back-and-forths, taking both the editor and my time.

What’s interesting is that a decent percentage of my clients are only two of those four things: I just accepted work that is interesting, positive, and organized but pays nothing. On the other hand, if the work is paid at a strong level and has a minimum of those editorial handwringing emails, I’ll keep it even if the work is eh. I think of those clients as bankrolling my involvement in other, less well-paid ventures (like working on my book!).

Through it all, I am acutely aware that I probably haven’t chosen “my career.” Chances are good that I will do other things in my life, drawing on each of the skills that I’ve honed at my past career-pursuit job and at my current something-that-might-be-a-career. I wish I could tell every wide-eyed high schooler to aim higher than just waiting until they feel a fluttery “career passion.” They can make a passion, through building the job they want.

Two final steps helped me decide it was time to quit my day job and write full-time. The first was local magazines, while the second was simply called my “two month experiment.”

The only segment of writing I hadn’t tried was journalistic writing in my local community. I saw a website about a luxury lifestyle magazine in the nice town 20 minutes away from me, and I contacted the editor about potential writing opportunities. As it turned out, she was looking for a new writer!

I loved writing for that local magazine: the pay was good, I got to do interviews, which I found exciting, and it expanded my writing skills. I didn’t have to come up with my own topics – the editor planned and assigned them – which made me feel more relaxed. I could pour my creativity into her ideas rather than scrambling to come up with my own.

These kinds of magazines were getting popular, and before I knew it, I was writing for two of them, then 3. It was occasionally a scramble to fit a phone interview in on a lunch break or an in-person interview after work, but I was managing.

As summer came around, and my 10 month contract’s break months loomed, I thought to myself, “What would it be like to “pretend” to be a full-time freelancer for these two months? What if I could replace my day-job income entirely for these two months?”

So, instead of taking things easy, I tried to take on enough writing related work during the two months I was between contracts to be able to pay all my bills. As it turned out, the connections I’d made over two years’ time had paid off: I made my income goals.

I returned to my full-time job, realizing that I was mentally ready. I gave substantial notice at my work, but I did go ahead and quit within 6 months of returning to my contract. It was time, and I was ready.

This is the story of how I got from beginning to freelance in 2016 to full-time freelancing at the end of 2018. What has your journey been like?

The next major bumps in income, from a bit of money to actual, could-someday-be-a-career money, came from two organizations.

First, I was accepted by a company that managed multiple websites to write a variety of lifestyles-related articles. While they didn’t pay exceptionally well, they had a super-organized system for assigning, the articles didn’t take long to write, and I got regular, interesting assignments. This almost doubled my income as I added multiple websites to my queue.

Second, I was accepted to do contract work for a marketing agency. They create a list of all the articles they need written, and depending on the length, you command a different rate. The pay is higher than average for marketing copy “mills” because the customer can choose to reject your article, which leaves you with rights to the article but also no pay. At first, I feared this would be a bad move for me.

However, it became clear that the site’s claim that only a small fraction of my articles would be rejected was true. I lost about 10% of my articles to rejections, but I made more than double the standard pay-per-word for most content-mill copywriters. Over time, I got better and better access to higher-word-count and higher paying jobs.

What was most helpful about this site was that, during times when I was working, I could stop doing marketing articles entirely. However, during vacations or during my two months off contract, I was able to “scale up” my participation, writing many, many articles and boosting my income substantially.

Throughout this time, I still pitched articles, pitched direct clients, and wrote multiple articles a month. My work was ramping up, but I didn’t feel like it took up all of my free time.

One more step had to happen, though, before I was ready to take the leap.

One thing that many people won’t talk about in their freelance journeys is that they have been rejected or ignored 10 times for every one response they’ve received.

I do not take this personally – I don’t know how anyone could and still persist in this career path! I know I am busy and lose track of cold emails from strangers occasionally; it only makes sense that others might do this to me as well.

However, it only takes one person to say “yes” to change things. My first recurrent client was a mid-sized company (had barely graduated from start-up, honestly) in the health/fitness sector. I had used their product and reached out to see if they would be interested in paying for weekly blog posts.

And they said yes! My price was above content-mill standards but not very high, and the posts were low on research and time involvement, so I was really making a pretty decent hourly rate from them.

My rhythm was what I loved most: I’d submit one week’s post with a list of ideas for the next post; the editor would send back her edits for confirmation, and she’d assign me a post topic for the next week. I dream of such efficiency with every client!

This arrangement worked for about 10 months; the marketing team on her company eventually went in a different direction (they’ve since hired full-time copywriters!) but I have never stopped being grateful for that work.

That first private client was my taste of what it was like to have no middlemen between me and my client. It worked really well, but obviously, there are a lot of people vying for that space. You never know when you’ll email someone who just hired a full-time writer, who has a faithful copywriter already, or who simply aren’t big enough to invest in a blog.

That doesn’t mean you should stop pitching the companies you are already loyal to! You, as a dedicated customer, are a pretty great asset to them. This was my first big bump in my freelance income, from occasional article to 4-5 articles a month.

To Be Continued…

I realized the other day that a lot of people don’t know how I got to the point of quitting my day job and working as a writer full-time. I am sure a lot of people assume that it was a moment of being fed up with my work and ready to move on, and that I launched my writing life from that moment.

Nothing could be further from reality for me!

I began writing in earnest two and a half years before I quit my day job. I also didn’t dislike my day job; I just was amassing enough clients that I had to choose between cutting back on writing or becoming entirely too stressed. After a lot of soul searching, I chose to leave a job I liked in order to pursue the exciting possibilities implied in a career working for myself.

So how did I get started? Well, I’d written off-and-on for 10 years: small magazines in various cities, an article for my alumni magazine in college, that sort of thing. But after a friend of mine got published in a digital publication without a lot of fuss, I thought, why not me?

My first few months involved a lot of cold pitches: writing to the editor of a publication and asking if I could write an article for them. For the first time, however, I only agreed to produce the article if there was an established plan to pay me something.

I began during a break from my job (I was on a 10-month contract), but found that, in a few hours on the evenings or weekends, I could produce a couple of articles a month. So I kept doing it, and kept pitching.

That is how it all began!

I am still in the hustle-hustle-hustle phase of my development as a professional writer; it is easy to get caught up in daily tasks and not take any time at all to get things done.

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that, about 30 minutes after I wake up, I hit my peak thoughtfulness for the day. I get about 2 hours of golden productivity, and after that, I have to either grind out work through willpower or work on more reactive/receptive tasks like reading, answering emails, and invoicing.

However, despite the need to immediately launch myself into hard work early in the day, I’ve been trying to remind myself to enjoy the freedom that I’ve worked to gain as a work-from-home writer. One of the big steps I’ve taken is through coffee.

I love all kinds of coffee, honestly, but I can taste a noticeable difference in good coffee. I started with a trial of Bean Box a while back and just loved it; even though it ships from far away, something special happens when I invest in the coffee I’m going to drink every morning.

For one thing, my home becomes more like “the coffee shop,” in the sense that just my morning joe becomes a treat. The other thing is that a little happiness, enjoyment, and ritual around making and drinking coffee seems to be pretty good for my creativity as well.

What little, positive rituals do you go through during the day that help you to write better, work harder, or just be present in your activities? Feel free to share.

The Bean Box link is an affiliate link, but I never use links for services or products I don’t actually use and like; I recommend Bean Box even if you just google them and don’t go through the link!

I love writing retreats, and I love seeing old friends. Recently, my friend and I used an Airbnb apartment and our own desire for warmer weather to create a trip that was part vacation, part writing marathon, and all fun.

Here’s how we made it work:

• We figured out lodging, flights, and a rental car really early; I was able to snag a really good deal on the rental car specifically because it was so early. We picked a destination based on cheap flights, and the lodging, being an Airbnb apartment, was also very affordable. I also find that, even far out, you can get better Airbnb deals if you work with someone who doesn’t have a lot of established reviews yet. Clearly, not everyone will be comfortable with this option, but most early Airbnbers are looking for the chance to earn your trust and will start out with lower rates as a result. You can also pick Superhosts, for added reassurance that everything is going to go great.
• The week before the trip, we set some itineraries. For us, the priorities were: get some exercise, eat well and cheaply, write at least 4 hours a day, and see some authentic aspects of the city. This meant that nearly every day we went to a yoga class early, wrote for two or three hours at a coffee shop, went on a walk and made lunch at the apartment, wrote for another two hours, then went to see a play or go out for live music or some other activity in the evening.
• The first day we got there, we went grocery shopping! We saved a lot of money by always having snacks on hand, and we got ingredients for super-healthy salads so that we could enjoy the less-healthy options when we ate out once a day or once every other day.
• We didn’t do any crazy nights out, but we tried to spend some time at a museum or somewhere not related to our writing every day; I think it kept us from feeling like our work was getting stale.

The week went swimmingly, and we both generated a ton of work; despite doing a lot of writing for our jobs, we were able to take this “time off” in order to pursue creative projects, and even if you can only take a “one day” retreat where you leave your house and go to a coffee shop 20 minutes away, I can definitely recommend the change of scenery! My friend and I also live in very different places and see each other once every two years or so, so the extra expense of travel was also to see her and reinforce that friendship.

Airbnb link is an affiliate link, which gives you a discount and me some credit if you use it, but I recommend the site even if you don’t follow my link!