In his essay Writing Is Ceasing to Be a Writer, Enrique Vila-Matas recounts that he chose his profession because he wanted to be free and didn’t want to go to an office every morning. When he made that decision, he didn’t know he would end up living “like a mole in a tunnel, working day and night.” In interviews and memoirs, many novelists admit that, aside from their calling, what they wanted most when they began writing was to escape the cold of the street by staying home on those weekday mornings when most employees are commuting and going about their daily routines. Shortly afterward, they realized that “calling someone a disciplined author is redundant,” as Juan José Millás often points out, because literature demands many hours of concentration each day.
But it’s not just about writers or more or less famous artists whose work routines — like everything else around them — are subject to scrutiny. According to available data, in Spain, around half of self-employed people work from home, and that includes journalists, tax advisors, advertisers, lawyers, teachers, illustrators… who, in the best-case scenario, have an office in their home, and, in the worst, have barely managed to fit a desk into their bedroom.
Offices are often portrayed as daily hellholes, where workers listlessly play their part to appear productive, attend pointless meetings, or conspire, fueling grudges and envy. However, many studies show that, between the ages of 20 and 60, especially for men, work is the place where new friendships most frequently arise (before then it was school, and in retirement it will be the local neighborhood). Perhaps this is why those who work from home, and especially freelancers, are the most prone to loneliness. Juan Gómez Bárcena confirms this in Map of Loneliness (Seix Barral, 2024), an essay where he states that “the long-term unemployed, the self-employed with suffocating workdays in their own homes, or retirees who have stopped working are ideal candidates for suffering from loneliness.”
Around half of self-employed people in Spain work from home.Maria Korneeva (Getty Images)
In 2017, a platform called Leapers emerged in the UK to highlight the mental health problems — closely linked to loneliness — experienced by freelancers there and offer them a support network. For professions that rely on the internet and operate under similar conditions, the conclusions of their reports are applicable to virtually any country. The most significant findings are as follows: in 2024, 32% of freelancers felt the impact of loneliness and isolation constantly, while 89% experienced it at some point; 66% felt that irregular work patterns and routines were detrimental to their well-being; and 91% felt unproductive (and overwhelmed by a lack of income) for at least one month. In short, 86% of respondents agreed that self-employment is detrimental to mental health.
Discipline at home
Jaime Lorite is a freelance journalist and contributor to EL PAÍS. After years of working from home, he has found some routines that help him avoid problems: “To combat laziness brought on by the cold, I go for a run every morning at 8 a.m. before starting work; it’s a way to nip it in the bud. I’ve internalized this system to avoid getting stuck in a rut.” He adds: “The lockdown was a tough school where we learned out of necessity; at first, we struggled, giving in to harmful habits like working from bed, staying in pajamas all day, or even drinking alcohol while working. That was unsustainable, and now I follow the advice to shower and get dressed first thing in the morning to mentally prepare myself for work.”
“The ‘bedroom mentality’ is dangerous if you don’t keep an eye on it,” agrees illustrator Gala Castro. “The psyche naturally gravitates towards what’s comfortable, easy, and ultimately harmful in the long run; you have to be a little savvy and deliberately introduce friction: getting up early, getting dressed, moving around, going out into the world. The bedroom mentality can be countered by wearing ankle weights and going for a four-mile walk before breakfast. Working from home requires a certain aesthetic and mental discipline to avoid becoming complacent with your own comfort,” continues this professional who seeks a balance between food, walks, and projects every day.
Working from home requires a certain esthetic and mental discipline, says illustrator Gala Castro.Morsa Images (Getty Images)
Philosophers like Terry Eagleton, who develops this idea in his work The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Trotta, 2011), consider that the artist, since the 18th century, has served as a model of the individual adapted to capitalism. Driven by their vocation, artists create their work without coercion and dedicate themselves fully to it. This is the thread that Remedios Zafra picks up and updates in her influential work The Enthusiasm. Precariousness and creative work in the digital era (Anagrama, 2017), where she dissects some of the traps hidden within the cultural industries. All of this applies to many who have chosen self-employment, since, as Matthew Knight, founder of Leapers and representative of a platform that brings together more than 12,000 freelancers, says: “Those who feel a great passion for their craft often move to this model because they want to free themselves from the politics and processes of a large organization to focus on their own work. So that identification and drive are already there before they become self-employed. The challenge arises because, being solely responsible for delivering a job, a greater sense of responsibility than is healthy can emerge.”
Of course, not all of this sense of responsibility is abstract: the need to reach a certain income level contributes to the unease. “I’m quite a demanding boss of myself, working insane days and hours, bordering on self-exploitation. This stems from the need to have a decent income and not be financially dependent on my parents. It’s a perverse dynamic where freelance journalists take it upon themselves to mistreat themselves, something that benefits the companies,” Lorite acknowledges.
Friendships that don’t arise
“When you’re self-employed, you have to make an effort to build connections, meet people, and stay in touch. We see many freelancers struggling with feelings of isolation, which, according to our research, can be 2.5 times higher than for salaried employees,” says Knight, who insists that freelancers should reserve some of their energy for their friendships. “Most of the freelancers I know balance their time at home by meeting up with others outside of work, working in cafés and coworking spaces, attending networking events, and, of course, having more flexibility also allows them to see friends outside of work hours.”
For Castro, working from home has never been a problem: “I prefer that socialization isn’t automatically included in the work schedule. I don’t like the feeling that something exists only out of habit, and I don’t want to end up confusing socialization with repeated physical proximity. I talk to my neighbors from balcony to balcony, I know everyone by name at the gym, and when I go to the market, I enjoy the anecdotes my butcher tells me about her great passion: motocross. Working alone doesn’t make you live in isolation,” she maintains.
Lorite also sees it this way and recalls the positive aspects of remote work: “It has allowed me to achieve a more effective work-life balance, letting me work from my parents’ house in Talavera or from my sister’s house in Madrid, which helps me maintain my existing relationships. Perhaps I miss out on making new friends in an office, but remote work allows me to be more present and accessible to my lifelong friends, in addition to the friendships based on shared interests that I continue to cultivate on social media.”
When you’re self-employed, you have to make an effort to create connections, meet people, and stay in touch.Pekic (Getty Images)
Thus, unchosen solitude — as Bárcena calls contemporary urban isolation in his essay — or loneliness is not the worker’s responsibility, nor an inevitable curse, but rather a consequence of an unfavorable position within the production system. This is what most worries Lorite: “It’s difficult to organize or protest collectively as a freelancer because we’re in an abstract and isolated space. Often, out of embarrassment, we don’t ask others how much they charge, which fuels inequality and leads us to accept as normal rates that aren’t. Idafe Martín Pérez’s column, ‘Freelance,’ was courageous in publishing figures on what each media outlet pays, breaking a taboo that only benefits those who don’t pay what’s due for the hours worked. The most effective response to this is to unionize.”
After nearly a decade of listening to and organizing the demands of British freelancers, Knight reaches a similar conclusion: “Our annual survey reveals several challenges: a lack of confidence (if you try to handle everything on your own, it’s easy to doubt your instincts); isolation; and financial anxiety. Much of our work involves empowering people to be proactive: recognizing when things are going wrong, setting boundaries to protect themselves, and fostering a community so they’re not alone. However, what worries me most is bad client behavior: unfair payment terms, late invoices, ghosting, low rates, restrictive contracts, or last-minute cancellations,” he laments.
Ultimately, like so many other things, the mental health of freelancers also depends on the accountability mechanisms that govern their relationship with the companies they work for: “If organizations are increasingly reliant on freelancers, they have a responsibility to work ethically and not cause harm. Companies must start being held accountable for this segment of their workforce,” Knight concludes.
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