MONEY ALERT
Easy to say, sometimes hard to do. Not because you don’t want to be organized, but because of the many different tasks freelancers do. And it’s not like filing and bookkeeping rank high on life’s big thrill list.
Maybe we can’t make organizing exciting, but we can make it clearer and easier—and there is great satisfaction in being able to instantly find something you need, or not have to cross the room for that file or paw through drawers with a caller on hold, or have the pleasure of walking into your office on a fine morning and seeing a pristine work surface waiting for you.
Every business is different—and so is every freelancer—so what follows aren’t mandates, but options and ideas for getting control of files, piles, email, and more, plus putting some fundamental structures and habits in place for bookkeeping and accounting. You should customize your systems to your industry and situation, including talking with your accountant or if necessary a lawyer about your record-keeping needs. (For information about paperwork relating to subcontracting and hiring, see Chapter 15.)
Organized record keeping will save you time and angst at tax time. You’ll save money not paying your accountant to tunnel through your records. And you might save your hide with Uncle Sam, because you must have backup to prove tax claims of business income, losses, expenses, and deductions. That includes receipts, credit card statements, bank statements, canceled checks, deposit slips, itemized phone bills, and pretty much any other record relating to the info in your return. You want to easily flip through the 1099-MISC forms sent by clients and check them off against your deposit records. And of course you need to depend on your own records to report any income that doesn’t require a 1099.
If, God forbid, you get audited, you want to produce a veritable blizzard of backup—in the form of copious, clear, precise records. Particularly if you’re claiming losses, organized bookkeeping lends credibility to your claims. (For a discussion of taxes, see Chapter 15.)
So do yourself a favor and save every receipt or record. You and your accountant can always decide later whether you really need it. Think you’ll remember all the details? Do you remember whom you had lunch with on Thursday a year-and-a-half ago, where, what business you discussed, and what it cost? Exactly how many miles you drove to meet Client Twisted Knickers way too many times last summer? Precisely what it cost to fix your computer when it crashed while you were on deadline and witnesses reported seeing a wild-eyed individual in coffee-stained clothing bursting into the computer store, shouting, “Make it start! Make it start!”?
For disputes or legal issues, you may need backup to prove actions and interactions: what you or others did (or didn’t) say, do, promise, deliver, pay, et cetera. Scary, yes. But it happens. When it does, emails, memos, schedules, financial records, even phone logs can become hugely important.
You’re negotiating a new contract and want to use language from a deal you made two years ago. Where is that contract?
You’re wrestling with a nightmare project when you suddenly realize you could retrofit the schedule from another project to get this monster under control. Where is that schedule?
Your client says, “You sent an email saying you’d do this, remember?” No, you don’t. Where is that email?
On the way home one night you have a killer business idea. Every detail’s clear. A year later, you read someone else has done it and is raking in the dough. You feel sick because you forgot about it after you got home.
Your website’s in the works! You’re going to want to populate it with reviews of the projects you worked on . . . articles about the software you developed . . . tearsheets of the ads you designed. The better records you keep of your achievements, the more effectively you can market yourself.
Good records help you keep tabs on how your freelance career is growing. Tracking client payments instantly reveals who’s late and when to follow up or warn that work can’t continue until they pay. Track your expenses to see whether they’re creeping up. Want to know the minimum income you need to meet your annual expenses? A breakeven analysis will tell you. Looking for a business partner or funding? Good bookkeeping lets you pull together financial reports for a business plan.
When you first start freelancing, you don’t always know exactly how you need to organize things. So don’t get down on yourself if things haven’t been well organized up to now. It’s never too late to start.
Everyone’s business is different, but this section will get you thinking in new ways about those piles and files.
Your office systems should be realistic for your habits and let you work at your best.
It starts with becoming aware about stuff you’ve been doing that isn’t working: “When I get busy, crap piles up. Notes, bills, reminders, subscription forms. This distracts me and makes me feel disorganized.”
Next, take tiny steps to challenge your habits: “I’m a nonlinear thinker, and my space reflects that. I try valiantly to throw things out. Slowly I’m getting better at it.”
Then ask yourself if you can make some changes that reflect how you naturally work—but let you work at your best. For example, this freelancer knows he’s a paper person, so he set up his office to support his paper habit: “I never look back on a conversation or project and wish I’d taken fewer notes. My workspace is filled with folders containing time lines, sketches, flowcharts, and contracts. It can be a struggle keeping things organized, but it’s worth it to have all the information about every project at my fingertips and not have to ask clients to repeat themselves. I need ample shelf space to handle the material associated with each project. I like that I can keep everything organized and still work from stacks of books and paper—my preferred organizational method.”
And here’s a paper minimalist: “I don’t keep many files, as I don’t like the clutter. If I file it, I tend to never touch it again, so why file? I try to only touch a piece of paper once and then discard it forever.”
The key is finding a balance between challenging yourself to change a little and letting your habits run amok: “If what you’re doing keeps you organized and you can find a phone number, a piece of research, or a pitch idea almost instantly, you’re in good shape.”
In Chapter 2 we talked about organizing your workspace around your 24/7/360—what you need constantly (24/7) in arm’s reach (360) versus what can be stowed in a drawer, across the room, or out of sight, out of mind. Now we’ll take it a step further.
Look at your piles, files, records, notes, papers, and “stuff” and ask yourself what you need to access hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, only for special reasons, or maybe not at all. You might assign levels of high, medium, and low. Right away you’ll start looking at your setup differently.
Your 360 is for short-term stuff. The more often or more urgently it needs to be handled, the closer it should be.
Suppose you update your business expense sheet daily at the close of business. You might designate a spot on your desk where you keep the day’s receipts. Once they’re entered on your expense sheet, you shift them to a file outside your 24/7/360.
But if you update your expense sheet weekly or monthly (say, when you reconcile it to your credit card and bank statements), it’s more medium-level than high-level. You need it in your 360, but not under your nose. You might keep medium-level things in labeled hanging files, stacked or standing files, cubbies, boxes, or other containers on your desk turnaround, behind you, or on shelves in your 360—on your radar, but not vying for attention when it’s not their turn.
Other possibilities for the 360:
• Files for clients you’re dealing with today or this week: “I noticed my doctor has a standing file on his desk for the files of patients he’s seeing that day (mine was in there). Good idea.”
• Dedicated files for receipts, deposit slips, or other transactions to hold until you get your monthly statements, when you reconcile and file them away
• Files you need in easy reach for personal or family issues in the works (vacation plans, a medical billing problem, a party): “We’re landlords of an apartment in our building. If there’s an emergency or we’re filling a vacancy, it can take up a lot of time.”
• “Waiting-to-hear-back” stuff that you’ll handle as soon as you do
• Anything you deal with multiple times a week
• Small-scale research projects in process—remember, not everything’s on the Internet
• A designated folder to hold instructions, notes, or messages for an assistant, babysitter, your mate, or your kids if they’re old enough to be home alone—they can grab it even when you’re not there
• Anything pending in the short term.
Now: See stuff in your 360 that doesn’t have to be there? Move it out of your orbit and start sorting, pitching, and figuring out what you really must keep, how, and where.
If you’re a stacker, try standing files where you keep things that will turn over in a week or less. If something’s pending longer than that, move it to a box or standing file out of your 24/7/360 until you need it. With standing files, eventually you have to file or pitch.
“I’m a hard-copy reader,” Gail says, “My workspace is a mess—I’m drowning in paper.” If you’re this kind of freelancer, or if your projects require keeping stacks of stuff on tap, have a holding tank for them off your desk until you need them: “I have a grid-style bookcase with sixteen ‘cubbies.’ I assign one to each project (and one to tech supplies, one to receipts, et cetera). My desk stays clear, and I just haul out the stack for whatever project I’m tackling.”
Recruit a fast-eating shredder with a big mouth and a big belly as your ally against paper clutter and in protecting your personal information. Identity theft is a reality, and you also should take every precaution to protect your own and your clients’ proprietary or confidential information. The more your shredder can eat in one gulp and the more it can hold, the easier it is to beat paper piles into trembling submission. Make sure it can eat disks, too. Get recommendations from other freelancers; read product reviews online.
If you have to organize papers of different sizes, bills of various kinds, or swatches or samples, try pocket folders where you can group like with like, or labeled boxes where you can stow papers, CDs, DVDs, notebooks, and the like.
Do you open your mail right away or leave it for later? Have a system that matches your habit. I like the freelancer’s tip above about opening the mail standing up. I’d add: Stand near your shredder and drop stuff right in. Put checks and bills in designated places to be deposited and paid. For unactionable stuff you plan to read “sometime,” stow it in a box or standing file outside your 24/7/360. Go through that box when the pile is flush with the top or the standing file is full. Anything more than a month old, toss it. If you still really want to read it, keep it for your next assessment. This way you have a holding tank for such things, but they don’t overwhelm you. “I always grab something on my way out the door to read anytime I’m waiting somewhere. The game is: It never comes back in the house. I have to read and pitch it before I go home.”
The 24/7/360 rule applies to desk drawers, too. Things you use often enough that you’d be annoyed to have to get up to get them every time (stickies? seam cutters? screwdrivers?) are desk drawer–worthy.
Designate a grab-’n’-go drawer to hold things you grab before heading out the door: business cards, sunglasses, reading glasses, breath mints, pen/small notebook, flash drives, gym lock, or whatever else you need when you’re mobile. Consider it a loading dock for your bag, briefcase, or backpack.
Outside your 24/7/360 is medium-low and low-access stuff. The lower the access, the further away (or higher up) it might be. Current accounting and financial files that you’re adding to should be more accessible than files you might need only once a year, if ever. Office supplies you regularly replenish and extra digital equipment might be nearby, too.
You’ll want a secure place for tax records, tax returns, permits, licenses, leases, or other official paperwork.
You might have one accessible file for very important papers (the deed to your house, passport, Social Security card, birth certificate, marriage certificate, et cetera) that you can grab if you need to evacuate in an emergency. (And if you’re one of those incredibly smart people who actually does this, then you are truly a hero.)
Otherwise, let frequency of use be your guide. If stuff isn’t getting filed or you’re procrastinating because it’s too hard to access certain files, rethink their location. “Over there” materials could include:
• Office supplies
• Finance and accounting logbooks and files
• Tax records and tax returns
• Client files
• Equipment manuals, warranties, and service contracts
• Level 4 idea files
• Media clips about your work
• Reference materials.
Of course, you could create digital files instead of physical ones. You might keep digital and hard copies of important files.
Skip this section if you’re paperless and proud. Or keep reading and know there’ll be no public flogging if you choose not to make this change. It’s an individual decision, and one you can take in stages.
A good place to start: shifting things like catalogs and financial prospectuses to email. Then newsletters, professional publications, and other subscriptions. Ready? Get financial statements and bills online. Then maybe pay some bills online, if you feel comfortable. Your bank might offer online bill-paying, which centralizes the process: “My brother pays all his bills online through his bank. That way he doesn’t have to provide his bank account info to other entities.”
Some bills you might be more hands-on about. For example, if you’re not sure you’ll have cash to cover bills (especially bills with variable amounts) or need to transfer money between accounts before bills are paid, go slow or be selective about automatic payment.
If your bank statements are coming to a dedicated email address, you need to remember to go there each month, download the statements and save them in your computer system, reconcile them with your physical records, and delete the emails. Put reminders in your calendar. Make sure any urgent or actionable emails, such as bills, get on your radar big-time and don’t get mixed in with nonurgent stuff or sit in a file unnoticed!
Then on your computer, you can set up files for, say, your downloaded statements, organized by tax year. When you file away your tax paperwork for the year, burn that year’s file to a disk and file it with your hard-copy tax return and tax records. Want a diploma in advanced digital organizing? Scan your receipts and tax records and burn the whole shebang on a disk, with hard copies as backup.
You might decide to go digital in the New Year. Or go incrementally as catalogs arrive, subscriptions are renewed, and bills or statements come in. Also, you can receive bills digitally but pay them manually. Do what works for your situation and comfort level.
You can’t have too much backup because no matter what or how much you have, you’re at the mercy of, well, everything. Hard drives, external drives, flash drives, and disks are subject to the assaults of Mother Nature (fire, flood), sticky fingers (theft), old houses (burst pipes), mouthy pets, close encounters with a beverage—or sometimes they just up and die. Internet backup services put you at the mercy of technician error, business busts, or the fine print you didn’t read or policy you didn’t quite understand. Yeah, it’s scary out there. But since when did being scared hold back any freelancer?
Let’s assume you save your work at regular intervals and that your computer’s well inoculated against cyber invaders. But you should also save your data externally in case your computer data’s compromised or your computer crashes or is stolen or destroyed. And you should back up your backup. Burning disks used to be the only option, but now there are affordable external hard drives that hold lots of data.
To back up your external hard drive (which can meet the same sorry fates as your computer), you could use another external drive and/or disks stowed safely off-premises, use an Internet backup service, or all of the above.
Some people do a “lite” version of Internet storage by emailing important documents to themselves. Official Internet storage entails signing up for a dedicated service. It should be a well-run, stable business with features that meet your needs. Yes, it has happened that these outfits have shut down or suffered technical breakdowns that lose files forever.
There are free and paid versions (your Internet service provider might provide limited storage at no additional charge). Shop around, read product reviews, and talk to freelancers with backup needs similar to yours.
If you have special backup needs (large amounts of data, confidential data, needing to keep data for long periods or indefinitely), consult a knowledgeable specialist.
Maybe that worked before you went solo. But as your freelance business takes off, you should graduate from the shoebox/drawer school of bookkeeping.
Record keeping has two basic components:
1 Accounting books or digital records where you summarize your income and expenses, and
2 What the IRS calls “supporting documents” (examples: receipts, deposit slips, invoices, canceled checks, bills you’ve paid, et cetera) that provide the data for your books and support your tax claims.
Maintaining both has two components:
1 A system for updating your books during the current tax year, and
2 A system for filing and storing everything safely year by year, usually organizing the supporting documents by type.
Many freelancers have more than one business—graphic artist Monday through Friday, jewelry maker and street fair exhibitor on weekends. If you do, you need to keep entirely separate accounting for each business.
The first year you file a tax return for your freelance business, you have to choose an accounting method (changing it may require IRS approval). There are essentially two types:
1 Cash method. Lots of people use this method. You report income and (generally) expenses the year they’re received or paid. So if you bill a client $1,000 on December 15 and you’re paid on January 12 (i.e., the following tax year), you report receiving that income in the following tax year. Ditto for receiving and paying business bills.
2 Accrual method. Usually in this method, income and expenses are reported in the year they’re earned or incurred, even though you might not actually have received or paid them yet. Taking the example above of the client you billed on December 15 who pays you on January 12: You report that $1,000 for the tax year ending on December 31, because that’s the tax year you earned it. Similarly, you report expenses in the year you incur them, not when you pay them. In this system, you set up books for accounts receivable and accounts payable.
Some use a hybrid. Your choice should depend on the clearest way to document your income and expenses, and what’s necessary for your business. You may need to change methods if, for example, you start selling physical products. Not sure? Talk to an accountant or a professional bookkeeper.
Smart freelancers set up a separate checking account just for business use. It makes your bookkeeping and tax prep much easier (no sorting through business and personal transactions). It’s also a more transparent documentation of your business income and expenses if any questions arise about your tax return.
Which bank to choose? Up to you. It may depend on the services you need: whether you write a lot of checks (and by hand or electronically), what the bank charges for the transactions you do most, their minimum balance policies, and so on. Shop around; ask other freelancers for recs.
There are few hard-and-fast rules about how to keep your records, but here are three guidelines-of-thumb:
1 It has to be a system that works for the profession you’re in and the kind of business entity you have (for example, corporations need to keep the minutes from their board of directors’ meetings).
2 It has to enable you to maintain the kinds of records you need for the Five Reasons to Keep Great Records mentioned earlier.
3 It has to be one you’re able and willing to use.
Some people find spreadsheets are perfect (and the software can add things up so there’s less chance of human error): “My spreadsheet-whiz husband made me an invoicing/income grid when I started freelancing. I’ve used it ever since to keep track of whom I’ve invoiced, whether I’ve been paid, and whether I’m on track to meet my earnings goals for the year. He seems to think it’s quite simple, but I think it’s a marvel.”
Or you could sort receipts, bills, and other records into folders or large envelopes with handwritten entries on ruled paper clipped to the outside.
Some go even lower-tech: “I use those monthly planners you buy at office supply stores. That’s the best I can manage. I keep copies of all the invoices that go out and photocopy any checks that come in.” “I tape expense receipts into a spiral-bound notebook, scribble notes on the pages, and add it all up at the end of the year.”
Ask other freelancers what they do, including any accounting software they use, especially if you think you might want or need to create financial statements as your business grows. There are a lot of exciting digital tools available for organizing your business and finances. What’s popular now might be replaced by something even more amazing six months from now. Check out the options and see if any could work for you. Just make sure you understand how to use the system, or serious accounting snarls can happen. Take a class or get good help. Also, make sure your digital records are clear enough to match easily with supporting documents.
Just not into it? Know your limits; pay someone to do it right: “I don’t enjoy doing bookkeeping and accounting, so I hired a virtual assistant to manage my books and a CPA to help me manage my tax work. It frees me up to do creative work to build my business.” Get bookkeeper recommendations from your accountant, other freelancers, and small business owners you know: “I’m meeting with an accountant next week who does the books for a friend who’s been freelancing successfully for several years. It’s a simple system that works very well for my friend. I’m confident it will do the trick for me.”
When you do your bookkeeping depends on the kind of record it is. You might do your expenses day by day, while the details are fresh, quickly filing any receipts. If you’d rather do them weekly, write it into your calendar and have a place in your 24/7/360 where those receipts are in view, saying “Record me!”
You might have a similar weekly deposit system: a safe spot in your 24/7/360 where you stow checks and a deposit slip you add to as they come in. Bill paying and ATM reconciling can happen weekly, too. Keep all your paper bills in one place in your 24/7/360 or in a digital file if you’re paperless. Check what’s coming due; write a check or pay it online. Write the check number, date paid, and amount on the bill and in your bookkeeping records and file your hard copies.
Every month, grab your checkbook, reconcile it with your monthly bank statement (including any bank charges), and file the statement.
Also pull your income and expenses into monthly reports, detailing date, client/project, amount, check numbers, and any other pertinent info, with separate reports for direct and indirect business expenses. Seeing what went out and came in every month is a great way to see how your business is doing and can help you make Freelance Portfolio decisions.
If you stay on top of your accounting this way, there’s no avalanche of receipts and papers to sift through for taxes. You just pull your monthly expense and income totals into annual summations that you or your accountant use to complete your tax return. Tax prep gets a lot faster and easier, as this freelancer wistfully notes: “At the end of December and through January, I go through everything and make a master list of money received and money expended and ship it off to my accountant—but I wish I entered the info monthly.”
Once your tax return is filed, scan your stuff if that’s your chosen storage mode, make a backup of any digital records, and store it and your paper records in a safe place.
I like to envision this process as a funnel: You’re funneling all the transactions from your days into a week’s worth; a month’s worth, and a year’s worth, which then feeds into your tax return. You file papers as you go and then put the whole thing to bed after taxes are filed. If questions arise, you just reverse the process to trace back and find the receipt, bill, or other original supporting documentation.
MONEY ALERT
Never assume your bills and statements are error-free. Mistakes happen. A misplaced decimal point can vaporize a chunk of cash. Then there are criminals looking to help themselves to honest people’s money. Always check bills and statements against your records. Investigate anything that’s incorrect or looks suspicious.
You’ll be tracking two types of business expenses separately. We’ll talk more about these in Chapter 15, but here are the basic definitions.
These are expenses solely connected with your business. There are quite a few, but some examples are equipment and furniture used only for business (see Appreciating Depreciation, below), postage, supplies, marketing costs, professional dues and memberships, transportation, and business meals and entertainment.
If you can legitimately claim a home office (see Chapters 2 and 15), you can deduct indirect expenses, which are expenses that span your business and home life. Unlike direct expenses, you deduct just the percentage that correlates to the size of your home office compared to the rest of your home. You need to keep these separate from direct expenses.
Here again the list can be long, but some examples include: your electric and other utility bills, your rent or mortgage interest, and property tax.
Make sure your business reason for claiming an expense as a deduction is totally clear, and how you arrived at the amount. That’s why supporting documents (paid bills, receipts, et cetera) need to be kept as backup to your claims. Thus the funnel ‘n’ file process above—and why you write descriptions on your reports rather than relying on your memory.
For meals and entertainment expenses, for example, note the date, the location and/or a description, the business relationship (names, occupations, titles, or the business connection between you), the business purpose for the expense, and the amount.
Break out expenses separately even if they happened together. Suppose you take a client out to dinner and then to a ball game. They need to show up as separate expenses in your records.
A word here about record keeping for travel expenses: Not every travel expense is deductible, so document all your activities and costs and keep all your receipts so you can go over them later and determine what’s deductible, or what portions are.
Assuming you can legitimately deduct the travel, you’ll need the supporting documents (receipts, bills, et cetera) for your dates of travel, destination, your business reason for the trip, the cost of your transportation, your lodging, and any other costs related to doing business on the road. It’s a good idea to note and keep receipts for all your meals, too, until you can decide whether you’re using actual costs or will use the IRS’s Standard Meal Allowance. For more on travel expenses, see Chapter 15.
It’s common knowledge that you can’t necessarily sell something for the same price you paid when you bought it. That’s because many items lose value over time. This aging process is called depreciation.
What does this have to do with record keeping? If you’re deducting the cost of certain items that have a longer useful life than, say, a year (for example: your computer, your office furniture, your car), you may not be able to deduct the entire cost in the first year. You may have to take depreciation into account. For that you need a record of when and how you came to own it, what you paid for it, when you started using it for business, how much you use it for business (as a percentage, if you also use it for personal purposes), what you paid if you made improvements on it, when and how you sold it (if you did), the sale price (or its fair market value), and any expenses relating to the sale.
Set up a record of assets that you keep with your tax prep materials and can easily update, to use as the basis for depreciation on your taxes. The supporting documents have to be kept, too, things like sales receipts, invoices, and canceled checks.
See Chapter 15 for additional information. And visit the IRS website or talk with your accountant for specifics on what you can depreciate, and exactly how.
If you use your car for business purposes and want to deduct those expenses, keep a record with your tax prep materials of your car’s vital stats: model, make, and year, and the year you started using it for business.
You have two choices for how you track and record your costs.
If you choose the IRS standard mileage rate (a set rate per mile established annually by the IRS) to calculate your mileage, you record each trip: the date, the odometer reading at the start and the end of your trip, your location at the start and where you’re headed, the business reason, and the number of miles you drove for this trip.
An easy way to do this is to set up a template for a month’s worth of entries, copy it, put the sheets in a binder and throw it in your car. Just fill in the info whenever you go out on a business call. The sheets will eventually be filed away with your tax records for that year. Or record the mileage info in your calendar where you’ve noted the appointment.
The other method involves tracking the actual expenses for using and maintaining your car, such as fuel, oil, repairs, insurance, licenses, fees (including tolls, parking, and garage), et cetera. For this, you keep receipts for car expenses, and record your odometer reading at the start and the end of the tax year.
If you use your car for business and personal purposes, you can only deduct the percentage correlating to business use, so you’ll need to keep a record like the one described above for the standard mileage rate method, adding a designation for personal or business trips. At year’s end you figure out what percentage of your trips were for business and use that to calculate the correct percentage of actual expenses you can deduct.
SELECTED IRS TAX RECORD-KEEPING RESOURCES
Here’s a selection of Internal Revenue Service publications you might find helpful as you learn more about tax record keeping. Type the titles into your browser.
• IRS Publication 463, Travel, Entertainment, Gift, and Car Expenses
• IRS Publication 583, Starting a Business and Keeping Records
• IRS Publication 946, How to Depreciate Property
• IRS Tax Topics, Topic 704, Depreciation
Read the newspaper every day and you get current on current events. Get updates about new music and you know what’s happening with your favorite artists. Watch your favorite shows every week and you can dissect every character and episode.
It works the same way with record keeping. Doing a little every day will make you the resident expert on your business. You’ll know exactly how much is coming in and going out. Do your monthly income and expense reports show more going out than coming in? Maybe you need to tighten your belt, charge higher rates, prospect for better-paying clients, look for some Blue Chips, or nudge the slow payers. Are you bringing in more money than last year? You might need to pay more estimated taxes. Good record keeping helps you correct course.
Want to go a step further? With some research and maybe the help of a financial professional, you can slice and dice your data to create various financial statements: profit and loss statements, break-even analyses, and balance sheets. These are the kinds of reports you might do if you’re writing a business plan.
It’s great to work toward an ideal—your ideal office, filing setup, and organizational habits. But if the setup isn’t perfect, don’t despair. Just do your usual good work and take baby steps to get to a better place. It’ll happen.
“When I started freelancing, my inbox was one square foot of the coffee table. My out-box was the couch, where I put things to be filed or mailed. My desk was a half-moon-shaped table that held—barely—my laptop and my to-do list. The phone sat on a stool by the desk. My files were plastic storage bins. But my little space was flooded with sunlight and it was all mine. In that funky little space, I wrote reams of copy, matched wits with learned people, hatched ideas, and had brainstorms. I learned that good work can happen anywhere. Because good work is up to me.”