Leslie Lang | Talk Story Press

Someone told me recently about her son, a graphic designer who works full time for an agency and does freelance jobs on the side. She said he has considered leaving his full time job to freelance full-time, but worries about doing that in this poor economy.
Here’s my response to that:
Especially in this poor economy, I feel much more secure working for myself — my pay flowing in from many different clients — than being at the whim of only one employer. 
In these uncertain economic times, a full-time job can disappear …

For lunch today, I had a picnic with my husband and little girl in the shade of our big old kukui nut tree. We brought along my daughter’s Bob (learning to read) books, and decided we will call it “The Reading Tree” and sit there sometimes to practice reading. She loved that.
After we ate and read and played some little kid horseshoes, I lay back on the green- and blue-striped picnic blanket and watched a white, cottony cloud barrel across the perfect blue sky. After awhile, my daughter and husband wandered …

One of my jobs these days is to blog for Hamakua Springs Country Farms, a 600-acre, progressive hydroponic farm here on the Big Island.
We started that blog more than two years ago. That’s when the farm’s owner, Richard Ha, hired me to create a website, and then a blog, for Hamakua Springs. My husband Macario, a photographer, did all that website’s photography, and that’s how he and I got to know Richard and June.
The blog is called “Ha Ha Ha!,” which is meant to represent the three generations of the …

One of the aims of this blog, beyond writing about what I love, is to market my writing business.
Now, what I’m about to tell you has happened before, and it’s happening again right now. I find it so interesting.
The minute I decided to start this blog — but before I’d actually done anything about it — my phone started ringing, much more than usual, with offers of work. 
My phone does regularly ring (or, perhaps more accurately, the email “bings”). I do have steady work. 
But it’s almost funny to me how …

My eyes almost fell out of my head when I read a June 27, 2008 article in Pacific Business News with the headline: For Solo Operators, Insurance Deals Grow.
It was about medical insurance — which, of course, is tricky business when you are self-employed.
From the Pacific Business News article by Linda Chiem: 
Hawaii’s major health insurers, pushed by health-care advocates and solo business owners, are expected to launch a pilot program that would give sole proprietors and the self-employed the chance to buy health insurance coverage at a group rate traditionally …

Here in Hawai’i, we introduce ourselves when we meet by telling who our family is and where we’re from; we put ourselves into a context, and try to establish some sort of a connection to each other. It’s traditional among Hawaiians. So let me tell you who I am.
My name is Leslie Lang and I am a freelance writer living near Hilo, Hawai’i. That’s on what we call the Big Island of Hawai’i, on the east (windward; rainier; lush) side of the island.
My father’s family is from this island. Some …