Tag Archives: writing

Taking Notes … in Scrivener

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I get tired of looking up the same things up over and over again and do something about it — with a software tool that I already have.

My memory for little facts and figures is something I can neither understand or explain. I can tell you the phone number for the house I grew up in (and left in 1977), as well as phone numbers for my grandparents’ homes and even my aunt — all of whom have been dead for more than 20 years now. (Heck, my dad’s parents died in the 1980s!) But, for the life of me, I can’t remember the pixel dimensions of a YouTube video thumbnail, which is a piece of information I need every time I publish a video on YouTube.

Little things like this haunt me. I found myself looking up the same information, over and over. It was a frustrating waste of time, especially when I didn’t have a way to look it up. In case you’re wondering, the Internet isn’t always available when you’re on a boat in a remote area of British Columbia. (And yes, I’d have a Starlink by now if I did’t think Elon Musk was such a shithead. By I digress and I definitely don’t want to discuss the Space Karen here.)

So I started taking notes.

It didn’t go very well. The problem is, I took notes on paper. Notebook paper, usually. But I didn’t always take notes in the same notebook and I’d sometimes misplace notebooks with notes. And I travel a lot and usually forget to take the notebooks with me. So I start new notebooks. And even if I did stick with a notebook for more than a week, the notes weren’t organized in any way. It was just a mess.

And then I thought about my To Do software, which exists on my computer, my phone, and my tablet. I can add an item to my to do list or consult the list or check off a completed item pretty much anywhere I was because I always had at least one of those devices at hand. The app on each device shared the same databases and automatically synced. Clearly, I needed something like that for note-taking.

I know Apple has a Notes app, but I’ve never been able to get it to sync between all my Apple devices. But there was one app I already had on all the devices and it was already sharing one database: Scrivener.

Scrivener is supposed to be a writing app. People on social media who write books (or want to write books) rave about it. They rave so loud and frequently, that I’ve tried using it to write books. I’ve tried at least three times with three different versions of the app. And I’ve failed as many times as I’ve tried.

The trouble is, I’ve been using Microsoft Word since 1989. I have written all kinds of things with it, including entire books and the scripts for video courses about it. I know Word (and Excel, for that matter) better than almost any other software I use. Scrivener does things Scrivener’s way. I do thing Word’s way. I just couldn’t be bothered learning enough about Scrivener’s way to use Scrivener to write books. Why learn to use a new tool when the old tool is working fine?

I could, however, use it to take notes.

My memory issue extends to the work I do as a silversmith. When I make items such as earrings and bracelets for sale, I need to have consistency in the way they are produced. I don’t make one of each earring design. I make dozens. And I don’t make them all the same day. The only way to ensure that I was making them the same way every time I made a batch — given my crappy memory for details — was to create what I called a “Recipe Book” for my jewelry.

Years ago, I created a Scrivener file, which lives in a Dropbox folder. (Dropbox is a cloud computing storage service where I put things I want to be able to access from all of my devices.) The Mac OS and iOS versions of Scrivener all have access to this file. I created folders for the type of item, such as Findings, Earrings, Bracelets. And then subfolders inside each of those folders such as the Sheet Metal, Wire Earrings, and Bead Earrings folders inside the Earrings folder. And then actual pages inside the appropriate folder. Each page listed the “ingredients” — materials, supplies, and tools — and steps for making one specific item.

Jewelry Recipes Example
Here’s one of the pages in my Jewelry Recipes file, which has expanded over the years to include descriptions of the stones I use in my work as well as boilerplate text I use in online shop listings.

This works like a charm, provided that I create page for each item. For example, my Split Bar Dangle earrings page describes the earrings, shows a picture of them, and lists all the materials, supplies, and tools I need to make them. That’s how I know that I need 3 inches of 1/4 inch wide 24 or 26 gauge fine silver bezel wire (among other things) for each pair. I don’t have to guess what I used last time I made them or measure a pair I might still have in inventory. I have the recipe and I can follow it, step by step, with the same ingredients.

What if I created another file that just had miscellaneous notes in it? Organized onto pages and maybe with folders to keep things easy to find?

It seemed like a no-brainer, so that’s what I did.

This is a life-changing (for me) productivity hack. Not only am I using it to note down the dumb things I find myself looking up online (and elsewhere) over and over again, but I’ve also begun using it as a place to keep notes for projects I’m working on.

For example, I’m currently preparing to get my boat on a charter program next season and I need to take care of some upgrades. As I do research and get answers from knowledgeable people on the TugNuts forums and elsewhere, I copy and paste the info into a page in my Notebook. When I need the info, it’s right there.

Notebook page example
Here’s my note page for the upgrades I need to complete on my boat this winter. Everything is right where I need it.

So sure, Scrivener might be “the go-to app for writers of all kinds, used every day by best-selling novelists, screenwriters, non-fiction writers, students, academics, lawyers, journalists, translators and more.” (Per Literature and Latte’s marketing material for Scrivener. But it also makes a damn good notebook app, keeping your data anywhere you need it.

Now if only I could stop buying empty notebooks…

Journaling My Year

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I start, on January 1, to keep a daily journal and 10 1/2 months later, I’m still at it.

Over the years, I have tried and mostly failed to keep a daily journal of the things going on in my life. I’d start with good intentions and then stop, mostly because I forgot to keep writing. Then I’d start up again, swearing I’d keep at it, but then stop.

What I Tried

I tried handwritten journals in beautiful blank books. Stopping midway through one of them was especially painful since I really wanted to fill them and have a record of a long, uninterrupted period in a really nice looking book.

I tried using calendar-style planners with a whole week on each spread. Not much space to write there; I could simply put down a few bullet points about my day. These suffered the same fate. I have many partially completed calendar books floating around my home.

I tried marble notebooks like the ones we used in elementary school. The local Fred Meyer sells them for just 50¢ each once the Back to School buying rush is over. I have a lot of them. (I have a paper addiction.) They fared no better than all the other handwritten options.

And yes, I tried digital journalling. I tried apps designed just for that purpose. (I was very excited about Apple’s Journal app until I actually tried it; what good is a digital journal if you can’t export or print it? How many people will be using the same Journal app in 20 years? Definitely not me.)

Scrivener Document Sidebar
As you can see in the sidebar for my Scrivener Journal document, I was very bad about writing journal entries.

I also tried using Scrivener, the darling of the writing world. I created a Journal file with folders for months and files for days. The screenshot of the document’s sidebar shown here should give you an idea of how that went.

Understand that my desire to journal every day has been very intense throughout my life. Heck, this blog was started as a journal of sorts. Not a daily journal but just a journal of the interesting things I was doing or thinking that I wanted to share.

That desire ramped up as I aged and I started forgetting about things I’d seen or done. The only remnant — or trigger, in some cases — of a memory was a photo I took at the time. But I don’t take photos of everything. I worried that I was permanently forgetting the things I did, things I might want to remember in the future.

Things that would be so simple to just jot down right after they happened.

In a journal.

Another Try

This came to a head when I was trying to write up the days of my Great Loop trip in the My Great Loop Adventure blog I created to document the entire trip. It isn’t easy to blog in detail every day so I slacked off. And then, when I was trying to fill in the gaps in the blog, I realized that I just couldn’t remember the details I wanted to share.

I needed to do something about this. My memory was starting to get iffy and I didn’t want to lose days of my life. I had to try journaling again and stick to it this time.

The Journal I bought
I bought a yellow one in the largest size; they come in a lot of colors and three sizes.

I started on January 1. I prepared by buying a very nice journal book on Amazon (don’t judge me) that had 365 pages. One page per day. They were not dated or numbered but they did have spaces for both bits of info. And lines close enough together to fit a few hundred words.

I started on January 1 in Key West FL, where I was on my boat with my friend Jason. And, for the first time ever, I’ve kept to it, providing an entry for every single day of my life. It’s now October 16 and I have entries right through yesterday.

Covid Entry
I backtracked to fill in the pages for days I was really suffering with Covid. All I remember from those days was sleeping.

I’ll be honest: I don’t always write every evening or the following morning like I want to. Sometimes I miss a few days and have to go back. I’ve found that going backwards from the current day usually helps. The only days when the entry is unreasonably short were the few days that I slept nearly the entire day due to my bout with Covid in August.

Why It’s Working this Time

Why am I finally doing so well at journaling this year? I think there are three reasons, one of which I already touched upon.

  • Motivation. I’m tired of forgetting days and weeks of my life. I’m tired of looking at photos I shot 3 years ago and seeing places I forgot I’d visited. I don’t think my memory is any worse than the average person my age — it’s not like it’s a problem — but the only way I see being able to remember stuff is to jot notes about the day at day’s end or the following morning.
  • Success leads to more success. After ten and a half months of keeping this up, I feel that I’d really be letting myself down if I didn’t continue to do it. So the more I write, the more I want to write.
  • 365 single pages to fill. The book’s design makes it easy — and, in a way, required — to journal every day. There are exactly the right number of pages to fill. (Actually, there were 366 days this leap year, but I can always insert an extra sheet if I have to.) Second, the pages aren’t that big. There are only 25 lines! That’s nothing for someone like me. And who says I have to use every single one?

I bring the journal with me whenever I know I’ll be away for more than just one night. I try to write my entries at the end of the day, but if I miss that, I’ll try to do it in the morning when I’m having my coffee in bed.

What I’ve got so far is a summary of what I’ve been up to so far this year. Sometimes I write about when I woke up, how I slept, and what I ate. Sometimes I write details about a travel day’s experiences. Sometimes I write notes to myself about how I have to do something or change a dumb behavior. And once in a while, I write what’s on my mind socially, politically, or romantically.

And yes, I can squeeze a lot into 25 lines when I need to. I don’t write full sentences. It’s not like it’s going to be published anywhere. It’s just something I can look back on in years to come to remember what those pictures I might have are all about. Or to fill in the gaps when I didn’t take pictures.

One thing is for sure: it’s definitely going to come in handy when I fill in the gaps in the My Great Loop Adventure blog.

Pronoun Woes

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This old reader/writer knows the difference between singular and plural pronouns.

I just finished an audio book that kind of bugged me. The problem: the use of plural pronouns to apply to a singular person.

It was jarring. Most of the characters had the usual singular pronouns of he/him/his or she/her/hers so the text I heard as I listened was extremely easy to follow when the reader read about those characters. But one main character used the they/them/their pronouns. As a result, anytime the reader referred to that person, it sounded as if he were talking about multiple people. My listening brain came to a complete halt every time.

I’m old school. Although I understand the reason why people don’t want to use a male or female pronoun, I really wish we’d come up with a pronoun that didn’t already exist as a plural.

It’s difficult to understand text that refers to one person with a plural pronoun when the text could easily refer to multiple people. Many times that the reader referred to this character, I had to figure out if it was just that one person or multiple people. It was extremely distracting from the story.

I want to blame the writer, but I know why he did it. He wants to help make gender neutrality more acceptable to the general public. He wants us to get used to it. It’s a noble goal. But it drives some of us nuts. I would definitely have enjoyed the book more — with a lot less distraction — if he stuck to standard pronoun usage for his characters. Hell, he already had two lesbian couples in the book. How much did he need to support gender issues in what was basically a science fiction drama?

And now I know folks are going to step forward here and comment that we’ve been using “they” to refer to singular unspecified gender individuals for years and that it’s in the dictionary or that it’s in some widely used style guide. But it’s only been in common usage for people who don’t want a specific gender identity for a short while now. And I’ve been reading and writing for more than 50 years. It’s not as if I can flip a switch in my brain and it all works out fine for me. “They” refers to more than one person in my brain and most of the brains out there.

Clearly, we need a new set of singular pronouns. Can we fix this please?

Facing Retirement

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“Retirement,” which seemed so far off just last year, is now close at hand and remarkably easier than I thought it would be.


John’s Carver at its slip in Charleston, SC, on the night I boarded for our five week trip together.

Back in Spring 2022 — just 14 months ago? — I was on a cruise with Capt John on his 36′ Carver Aft Cabin cruiser on a trip up the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW). (You can read more about that in my Great Loop blog.) It was April and I was trying to enjoy the cruise while worrying about a bunch of work-related things back home:

  • Cherry season was coming up and I had all the usual concerns about the season. Would the cherry crop be viable? Would all my clients sign up? Would I get back clients who hadn’t signed up last year because of the frost? How much acreage would I have to cover? Would I need pilots in Wenatchee, Quincy, and Mattawa or just Wenatchee and Quincy? Would I be able to find enough pilots?
  • My helicopter N7534D, was aging and had just 20 hours left until a required overhaul that would cost $270K. I had already decided to sell it after cherry season, but was 20 hours enough for the season? What would I do if I flew that off?
  • Would I be able to sell my Part 135 charter business (which had become a pain in the ass because of the ineptitude and spite of inspectors at the Spokane FSDO) with a nearly timed-out helicopter? Would the guy who kept claiming he wanted to buy it all actually come up with the money?
  • Would I be able to find another helicopter to replace it without going back into deep debt? Or should I just retire from cherry drying? Would I be able to sell my cherry drying business to someone else who wanted to take my place?

All this was going through my mind as we cruised at 6 knots up the ICW, spending a few days at stops along the way. To be fair, my cherry season stress normally starts in March and April, but this year it seemed more stressful than usual, mostly because of the age of the helicopter and its upcoming need for an overhaul.

My idea of “retirement”

Wonder why I keep putting “retire” and “retirement” in quotes? It’s because my idea of retirement isn’t the same as most people’s.

I’ll never stop working. Whether I write or make jewelry or do odd jobs in the gig economy, I’ll always have something to keep me busy that brings in a few bucks. (Hell, this summer I’m even selling eggs from my chickens at $5 a dozen.) I’d already considered getting my boat captain’s license — yes, for a boat I didn’t even own yet — and doing charter cruises to earn cruising money.

I won’t stop working until either my mind or body makes it impossible. Working keeps us alive; you can ask my wasband about his dad’s short retirement to get an idea of what I mean by that. (I hope you’re resting in peace, Charlie.)

In general, although I had thoughts about retirement, it was still far off on the horizon. I couldn’t imagine being “retired.”

I did, however, have a rough plan for buying my own boat and cruising the Great Loop in it. I’d even looked at boats. But I couldn’t buy a boat unless I sold the helicopter and I still couldn’t buy a boat if I wanted to get another helicopter and stay in the business. So I figured the boat purchase would be sometime in 2024, after that cherry season. Maybe that’s when I’d “retire,” too.

Everything Changes

Everything changed with a phone call. A guy with a lot of money offered me a lot of money for the helicopter if I sold it then. He wasn’t interested in the charter business, but the amount he offered for a helicopter that I was hoping to unload in a few months anyway was too much to ignore. On May 6, I watched it fly away for the last time with the money secured in my bank account.


It was a lot easier to say goodbye to this helicopter when the money was in the bank and my thoughts were on the kind of boat I’d buy to replace it. Also, no more $20K per year insurance bills. Yippee!

I arranged to lease a helicopter for the season. (There were problems with that, but I won’t go into it here.) I got contracts, I got pilots. The season started off good and then fizzled out in mid June when it stopped raining. The season ended in August. I heaved a sigh of relief again.

I listed my charter business with a broker. I knew that I’d have to get a helicopter to keep my Part 135 certificate and I’d decided that I was done owning helicopters. The broker listed it for a lot more than I expected.

Meanwhile, with all that helicopter sales money sitting in the bank, I started shopping for a boat. By the end of August, I’d made a deal on one.

Around that time, the broker found a few buyers for my company. One backed out. The other was an idiot tire-kicker who called me directly with a crazy lowball offer. But the third was serious. As I was signing papers on DocuSign to buy the boat, I was signing other papers on DocuSign to sell my company.

And suddenly, I found myself with a nearly new Ranger Tug, a new company that offered just cherry drying and aerial photo services, and a bunch more money in the bank than I expected to have at the end of cherry season. I’d also shed a costly-to-keep helicopter, a charter business I no longer wanted, and the anxiety of dealing with unreasonable, demanding people at the FAA.

I celebrated by spending September learning to cruise in my new boat. Then I shipped it to Chicago and got it on the Great Loop.


While I’m home this summer, I can be reminded of my first day on the Loop with the new Home Screen on my phone.

I named my boat Do It Now. Frankly, I was done waiting. Hell, I’d been done way back in 2010 but had a husband to shed to move forward. It had taken me 12 years to get through the divorce debacle and become financially secure in my home — which I’d paid off in July 2022 — before I could get back on track for what I wanted out of life.

But I didn’t think that I was one big step closer to “retirement.”

Retirement Thoughts Kick In

It wasn’t until this past winter that I started thinking about the possibility of tapping into the retirement money I’d been saving in earnest since the late 1980s. I own some stock — including Apple stock I originally bought at $13/share in the mid to late 1990s that had grown substantially with numerous splits and stock price increases. And I had some savings. And my living expenses were pretty low since just about everything I owned was completely paid for.

I’d been under the impression that I had to wait until I was 65 to start tapping into my retirement funds. Or maybe it was 62? I asked a knowledgeable friend. No, he told me. 59 1/2 is the age you can start using that money.

Holy cow. I was there.

I had a great winter cruising on the Great Loop in Do It Now, covering 3000+ miles, mostly solo. I made friends, saw a lot of new places, and met challenges along the way. I took a seven-day captain’s license class and passed the test.

But as March and April came along, I had the same cherry season worries as usual, but with a twist: I didn’t have a helicopter to fly. How was I going to deal with that?

Various solutions came about and I explored them all. But it wasn’t until I started contracting with clients that I realized what a non-issue it would all be. One of my clients did not sign up again. Since he accounted for about 2/3 of the acreage I cover, my season would be a lot shorter with fewer pilots and less revenue to pay them. I’d be able to keep a lot less money.

At first, I was angry. But then I reasoned it out. I wanted to to retire at the end of the season anyway. I was hoping to be able to sell the business, but if I had a good enough season, I might talk myself into keeping it and doing it again. But this one client had helped me make two decisions that took a lot of stress out of my life:

  • Without the added acreage, the business wasn’t worth selling so I didn’t have to stress over finding a buyer (or dealing with the tire-kicker who claimed 3 years ago that he wanted to buy my whole business).
  • With less revenue coming in, it was less attractive to keep doing the work. I was no longer tempted to do it another year. Retirement at the end of the season was a definite.

And I’ll be honest here: the client who had backed out was a pain in the ass anyway. Now I wouldn’t have to deal with his antics.

No, I haven’t been drying cherries for 25 years. It was only 15 years. Before (and during) that time, my summers were ruined by book deadlines, mostly for Quicken Official Guide, which I wrote the first 11 editions of starting in 1998.)

I was looking at the reality of having a summer off in 2024 for the first time in 25 years. It took no time at all to imagine my trip up to New York that summer for the ultimate Champlain, Erie, and Severn Canal cruise in my boat.

And with that, I had scheduled my retirement: August 2023. I would be 62 years old.

The Money Stuff

The question was, could I afford retirement without changing my lifestyle? I have to admit that cruising in a boat thousands of miles over the course of months is not exactly cheap. If I wasn’t going to make enough cherry drying money this summer to cover the next year of cruising, where would the money come from?

The answer was easy: my retirement funds.

They’d been growing and shrinking and growing and shrinking but mostly growing over the past 30 years. If I continued to earn some income from other sources, I wouldn’t need much every year — probably not even enough to start getting social security anytime soon. After all, other than cruising my cost of living was modest. (It really pays, folks, to eliminate all your debt before you retire.)

I had a talk with my accountant yesterday and a “retirement specialist” at my investment firm today. I discovered that my lowered income would save a lot of money on taxes, get me a better ACA health care subsidy until Medicare kicked in in 2026, and enable me to make retirement plan withdrawals without huge tax hits. I also discovered that tapping into my IRA would be as easy as filling in a form on my investment website. The money would arrive within days as a direct deposit to my bank account.

Of course, the money I’ve invested in my retirement funds is not unlimited. I will eventually run out. How quickly that happens depends on the stock market and how much I take each year. But I still have Social Security waiting for me and can always sell my home on the next market upturn. I think I’ll have enough for the rest of my life.

That is the goal, isn’t it? To die with just enough money to dispose of your body and give your friends a big party to say goodbye?

Facing retirement? Yes, but also embracing retirement. I just didn’t expect it to be this soon.

Stop Working for Free

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I get an email message from someone sounding pretty desperate for a job that isn’t going to help his career move forward.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you should know that I occasionally get email messages or texts so outrageous that I feel a real need to share them here as a lesson to whoever can learn a lesson. (Admittedly, many can’t.)

This is one of those occasions.

The Email Message

Here’s the message that arrived via a Contact link on this blog:

Hey Maria,
How’s it going? I hope this message finds you well. I wanted to reach out because I’m a relatively low-time private pilot with around 400 hours under my belt. I used to own a R22 helicopter for several years, but I actually sold it a couple of years ago.
Recently, I came across an article about cherry picking and it got me thinking. I would love to be considered as a potential candidate to join your team. I’m willing to work for free and cover all my expenses, including food and lodging, until we both agree that I’m ready for the job. I completely understand that you have no obligations or liabilities when it comes to me, and I’ll make sure to have full insurance coverage. My main goal is to become a better pilot and find a true purpose in flying. If you have a moment, I’d appreciate it if you could take a look at my profile here: https://[redacted]. In any case, congratulations on your blog. I absolutely love your lifestyle and it’s truly inspiring.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

Take care,
[redacted]

Tearing it Apart

There’s so much wrong with this, that I barely know where to start.

First of all, I have to assume that he means cherry drying and not cherry picking. I don’t do cherry picking. It’s hard work and better left for the professionals. The only cherries I pick are the ones my clients let me pick after they pick. I eat those. It’s one of the perks of the cherry drying business.

But what got me really fired up about this email is this guy’s offer to come here on his dime, cover all his living expenses, and “work for free.” He’s never really clear about what he wants to do, apparently for me, with his uncompensated time, but I have to again assume that it isn’t washing my cars or mowing my lawn. I suspect he wants to be a cherry drying pilot.

Even setting aside his extremely naive belief that a 400-hour R22 helicopter pilot can somehow get insurance to cover him for cherry drying work, the whole email reeks of desperation and ignorance.

Even if I had a helicopter for him to fly — and I definitely do not — what in the world makes him think I’d put him in it? I get first dibs on any idle helicopter that needs flying. And if I had a second spare helicopter, don’t you think I’d look for someone who had some actual experience in that make and model? I wouldn’t even consider using an R22 for cherry drying. It’s just too small.

Maybe he thinks I have a fleet of helicopters just sitting here, waiting for low time pilots to climb on board and fly them. I don’t.

But what tells me he didn’t do his homework was the simple fact that he seems to think that spending a summer as a cherry drying pilot will make him “a better pilot.” How much flying does he think there is? Although he offered “congratulations” on my blog — which turns twenty years old this year in October — he obviously didn’t bother to read much of it. Especially not the posts like this one where I specifically say that drying cherries isn’t for low-time pilots and is not good way to build flying time.

On my Contact Page
Yes, this is right on the page that he used to contact me. I guess reading the page contents was too much work for this guy looking for a job without pay. (This is a good reminder to update that page; Flying M Air has been sold and I’m retiring at the end of this cherry season.)

And no, I can’t expect him to wade through all 2500+ posts on this blog. Or do a search for “cherry drying” and read the posts that come up. Or click the cherry drying tag in the sidebar to quickly see posts tagged that way. But I seriously doubt he did more than watch a YouTube video of me drying cherries, find my blog, and click the Contact link to share his ridiculous offer with me. (He apparently didn’t read the paragraphs on that page regarding Career Advice and Pilot jobs, either.) He’s not the first lazy, ignorant job hunter I’ve encountered but I’m hoping that he’ll be the last.

Do I sound unreasonably harsh? Well, all I can say is what the fuck? I remember what I went through to get the various jobs I’ve had in my lifetime. Emailing someone with an offer to work for free at a job that doesn’t exist and that I don’t quality for anyway was never in my game plan. I have a whole series of posts titled “So You Want to Be a Helicopter Pilot.” Maybe he should start by reading those?

Stop Working for Free

But all of the above is not the purpose of this post. The purpose is to remind people that they should never offer to do a job for free.

No, I’m not talking about volunteering at the local Food Bank or Habitat project or any other charity operation. I’m talking about working for free — especially using highly specialized skills that you acquired at the cost of your time and money — for a for-profit business. Like a helicopter charter or agriculture company.

Believe me, companies have enough money to pay employees. If a company does not have enough money to pay its employees, it’s not a company you want to work for.

Any company that takes advantage of people offering to work for free — especially if that includes covering their own expenses — is not a company that you want to work for.

I firmly believe that everyone should be compensated for their work at for-profit organizations. That goes for pilots, writers, photographers, and any other job that takes a person’s time and effort or makes use of something that person created. Harlan Ellison said it best, and I know I’ve linked to this video more than once. Watch the video. Understand what he’s saying.

When you work for free, you tell people that your work is worthless. It’s not worth paying for. Is that the message you want to send? Do you expect to work for free for your entire life? That’s the path you set yourself on when you work for free.

Just stop it.