The Billfold talks to Natasha Vargas-Cooper. Some people are better off without jobs:
You’re totally freelance now, is that right?
I’ve never been offered or gone out for a staff job.There’s a lot of outdated dues paying I won’t abide by. I also don’t dig on having to deal with other personalities in an office setting or as a day to day thing. It wears me down and out… That made a lot of sense within a union context. I don’t want to do any of that within a writing context. I want to be left alone and focus on the work. The work is the best part. Hell is other people, right? Any organization with more than two people is dysfunctional. There’s one editor I would work for full time if he asked, but he hasn’t.… Living with my parents enables my ability to write. If I had to pay 750 bucks a month in some windowless shit hole in Korea Town, I’d have to do five to six fluff pieces a month on think-y pop culture pieces no one gives a shit about within an hour. I’m a slow writer and that sort of work shreds my nerves and exhausts me.
An addendum to Vargas-Cooper’s Sartre reference might be that the imperative to “get along” or “get with the program,” which is fundamental to succeeding on staff pretty much everywhere, is the same as living in bad faith.