I shouldn't have to switch off my phone to get a break from work but as a

In mid-2024, I made the difficult decision to leave my job as the deputy editor for Forbes Advisor Australia in order to pursue a freelance career.

While I’ve freelanced here and there over the years as my time as a journalist in Australia, I had never been interested in freelancing fulltime. I’m someone who doesn’t do well in the face of uncertainty, and the idea of not having a known annual salary each year absolutely petrified me.

But in July last year, freelancing became a necessity.

I fell ill with a brain infection, and was no longer able to work fulltime — especially not on the opposite side of the globe to my direct manager, which I had been doing for the majority of my tenure.

Forbes in entirety was behind me: they supported me through my medical woes more than I could ever expect any company to — especially prior to my diagnosis when I was simply unable to do my job since I could not stay awake for more than 15 minutes at a time, but no doctor could yet explain why.

When the diagnosis came (and the advice from the neurologists to not return to full time work for the foreseeable future) I made the difficult decision to resign from my role at a company I had never even dreamed of working for, because I truly never felt like I would ever be capable of being “a Forbes employee”.

It was beyond my wildest imagination, and the two years I spent working for Forbes, visiting the team in London each month and meeting American colleagues from HQ was always such a fantastic experience.

Trading that joy and consistency for a career of instability was hard, but necessary.

And so was purchasing a Nokia.

The Nokia necessity

Due to the brain infection, I have not been able to move home to Australia around Christmas time like I had intended.

Instead, I’ve extended my UK visa for another 12 months, and hope to be able to fly home when my parents come over to Scotland for their first ever visit this European summer.

As I started my journalism career when I moved to Melbourne from southern Queensland straight after university, my professional network is largely based in Melbourne and/or Sydney — these are the two big publishing hubs of Australia, after all.

While I could spend the remainder of my visa hustling to break into the UK market, I have chosen to instead continue working as a freelance writer, journalist and editor for Australian publications and companies.

This means I am working on the opposite time zone to all of my clients, just like I did for my entire tenure at Forbes.

Let me be clear: I am aware of the choice I have made, and the repercussions of such. (RIP my sleep schedule). 

But can I not expect basic human decency from my clients in 2025? Can I not be allowed to switch off from work, and not have clients message me on Instagram asking why I haven’t replied to their emails if I’m on my phone? Can I not set an out-of-office on my WhatsApp, and ask for that out-of-office to be respected? Can I not ask, kindly, for a few days off over the Christmas break?

I’m sure it’s something many self-employed individuals (of any industry) can relate to: how do we switch off? How do we set boundaries with clients, when they could be our only source of revenue for the next few months? How do we know when to say no, whether for the sake of our physical, emotional or mental health? Should we keep saying yes to every client who comes our way, even if it is — quite literally — killing us?

I’ve always been taught to never burn bridges with anyone, and especially not in my professional career. The Australian media industry is extremely small in comparison to other nations, like over here in the UK, and the Sydney-Melbourne bubble of media is even smaller.

I’m sure my friends from university, who all interned at the same small magazine publisher in Brisbane semester after semester following one another as the outgoing/ingoing intern would agree.

And don’t get me wrong: I don’t expect my clients to be able to keep track of where their remote writers and editors are from, or where they are currently living.

But I do expect human decency, and it shouldn’t take me having to literally disconnect from being contacted in any way, shape or form, for me to get that.

I shouldn’t have to switch off my iPhone, leave my laptop locked away in my office, and put my sim card into my Nokia just to get 24 hours off. And yet, I do. Even when I’m in a hospital bed.

It is a hard time for small business owners in Australia, entering into the second half of the financial year with a lot of uncertainty ahead.

I see this hardship on both sides of the coin: My family tree is a long line of small business owners and entrepreneurs, and I found my passion in small business reporting in my years at SmartCompany.

Yet in this day and age, with our overly-interconnected world, we need to know not only how to set professional boundaries, but also how to respect the professional boundaries set by others.

As we enter 2025, I urge you to be kind: to yourself, to your loved ones, to your employees, your contractors, and strangers: whether on the street or on social media.

Everyone is going through something, and even if we’re posting on social media or have our phones in our hands, that doesn’t mean we need to reply to your email right this second.

I promise you, the email can wait. A brain infection cannot.