Uncertainty causes stress.

I didn’t pull data on this, because I think it’s something we can all agree on anecdotally. Viscerally in fact.

For example, tomorrow, there’s supposed to be a big storm on the eastern seaboard, and my JetBlue flight was unceremoniously cancelled without even an email. Usually, I feel like there’s some notice from the airline or options. Or I don’t desperately have to be somewhere, so it’s not the end of the world that my flight has changed.

For tomorrow’s flight, however, I had to be somewhere the morning following and both the hotel and the event that I need to be at were non-refundable and seriously costly.

So, as I sat on the phone for ten…twenty….thirty minutes waiting to figure out if or how I could rebook my flight, there was a clear growth of anxiety due to not knowing if I was going to be able to physically get to my destination and use those pricey things I’ve paid for.

I literally felt like I couldn’t remember the last time I was so stressed. I thought about coaching calls that I have scheduled following the flight that I didn’t know what I was going to do about.

Sitting on the phone, I tried to figure out what this “stress” was catching me so off guard and it made me think of so many of you and situations that you find yourself with with getting your travel writing business off the ground.

Sometimes, that stress comes from finding a market to pitch in the first place. Sometimes, it’s from pulling together a next round of pitches for an editor that declined a first pitch but asked you for more. And sometimes, it’s lining up exactly what you’re going to cover in a piece once it’s assigned.

These are all black holes.

And that’s one of the reasons we put them off! (I’m not just looking at those of you who have those emails from editors sitting in your inboxes ;))

They’re black holes of time. That’s what you already know. But the real issue is actually that they’re black holes of uncertainty…which causes stress…which causes you to not know where to begin…which causes stress…and so it goes. As does the time!

It can seem, especially when you’re new to travel writing or to freelancing generally, that there is no way to destress by diminishing that sense of uncertainty. There’s just too much you don’t know. Where do you start?

The very simple answer is data.

Specifically, time data.

In this week’s live webinar, the second webinar in our new series on the business side of your freelance travel writing business, we’ll dive into the number one difference I see between the people who “do it” and those that don’t: how they spend their freelance time–you always have choices.

This week’s webinar will be at both a different day and time, as I will be completing my certification as a professional career coach at full-day trainings for the rest of this week. I’m very excited to bring this expertise to you as there are no certified coaches specializing in the issues incumbent to and the business of travel writing to my knowledge!

For those of you not currently in our coaching program who are considering joining or those looking at picking up a special one-off coaching call when you join the On-Demand At-Home IdeaFest Program, it’s important to note that when we offer coaching, it is actual career coaching, rather than “done-for-you” consulting on your travel writing.

Rather than a Q&A session (as we already offer that in our Dream Buffet and as a resource for coaching program members), calls are designed to get to the actual heart of what is holding you back from achieving your travel writer goals and over those hurdles.

So we’ll be offering this week’s new free webinar on Taking Control of Your Freelance Travel Writing Time–which is the single most important groundwork I lay with our coaching program members so that they can handle the work they want to do when it starts coming in–on Tuesday, March 6, at 4:30pm EST / 1:30pm PST.

The call with be available for free viewing of the replay for the reminder of the day, before it goes for transcription and set-up in our webinar library and the personal resource pages of members of the coaching program and the Dream Buffet.

Please note that this is a change, and we are only offering the reply to those that have registered for the free call for the remainder of the day the webinar originally airs, as we have announced in the webinars for several weeks.