How I (Sort of) Became a ‘Snowbird’

Blog # 15

My life as a new Floridian was going great. The weather during winter and spring was fabulous, I was making new friends both inside and outside of my gated community, and my work as a freelance writer/editor in my South Florida home was finally coming together.

But it took a little while to get there. In late summer and early fall of 2020, I had a full-time job working remotely as a member of the copy desk for a government tax news organization, but I didn’t enjoy the rigid work hours, the micromanagement from supervisors, and the very specific topics of the news stories I edited.

That fall I got offered a part-time editing job on a contract basis from another company and decided to give up the full-time position, with the plan to supplement my workload with freelance gigs and to get on “Obamacare” for health insurance, as I would be giving up the benefits package that I had with the full-time job. I longed for flexibility and more time to explore the new area around me, so I gave my notice for the full-time job and hoped I wouldn’t regret it.

At the time, all my work was remote because of the ongoing COVID pandemic, and I enjoyed the flexibility of working from home and not having a set schedule. However, the hours turned out to be sparse from the part-time job — they had promised an average of 30 hours a week, and I wasn’t getting even close to that. So much of my time that winter was spent filling out job applications and sending my resume around, looking for more work to pay the bills. What I wanted was steady freelance/contract work that guaranteed me a certain number of hours a week, so I wouldn’t constantly be spending my time looking for more work.

It took time to find the perfect work situation, but in early spring 2021, it started to happen for me. First, I answered an ad in a weekly e-bulletin that I had been receiving for years. It was weekly news from the medical and healthcare publishing world, and each bulletin included full-time as well as part-time/freelance opportunities.

One day, I opened up that week’s email and saw a link to a job ad for a copy editor who could edit medical text in various therapeutic areas, covering print materials, online continuing education programs, and documents from live medical meetings and conferences. It was perfect for me. I had plenty of experience and interest in science, healthcare, and medicine (despite being extremely squeamish in real life about medical things!). So the subject matter was a good match for me.

I took an editing test and right away got offered the hourly, contract position — it would be all remote, flexible work hours, and pretty good pay. The company is based in Reston, VA (near where I used to live before moving to Florida), but the person I would be working for lives and works in the Chicago suburbs (where I was born and raised). My supervisor also works out of her home, so she was perfectly understandable about my work situation.

I began to do that medical editing, about 20 hours a week, and it fit my life perfectly. Wherever I could take my laptop, I could work. And I was given steady editing assignments.

A couple months later, I landed a copy-editor position for a local lifestyle magazine, also part-time, also hourly. It didn’t start out that way. They had been looking for a full-time editor, as well as someone who could also assign news and feature stories in the Broward County area where the magazine was located. This didn’t quite work for me. Even though the job was remote, I wasn’t interested in a full-time position, and the hourly pay wasn’t enough. I also didn’t want to assign stories; it wasn’t my bailiwick. Plus, I was new to South Florida and didn’t know the area in which to assign stories to freelance writers.

I explained this to the man who called me to discuss the job. He offered to pay me more per hour, and to just make it a copy-editor role, since I had a lot of experience with newspaper and magazine editing, and I knew the journalism bible well — the Associated Press (AP) Stylebook.

We had a deal. Throughout the month, he would send me all the stories that were to run in the next month’s issue; I would format and edit them according to AP style, work on headlines, and send them back. It would be part-time, freelance, and flexible. Just what I needed.

A couple weeks after I got the offer, I drove to meet the publishers of the Parklander magazine (pictured here) and tour their office, as they were just a few towns over from me. It was a married couple from California who had moved to Broward County, FL, and bought the magazine about a year earlier. They ended up having to let the managing editor go after a few months, and because they didn’t have much editorial experience, they appreciated my journalism background, so it was a great arrangement between us. I enjoyed meeting them, and while we were shooting the breeze in their conference room, they brought up the possibility of me also writing a monthly column for the magazine. It would be about my new experiences and explorations of the area as a South Florida transplant. I loved the idea.

So now I had enough steady work to keep me busy each week and, finally, wouldn’t have to apply for any more jobs. Editing the medical documents was the first thing I would do on the weekdays. After I finished that, then I would copy-edit the magazine stories as they trickled in. Each month, there were about 10 to 14 days that were a little busier with the magazine work, as we headed toward the monthly deadline. I began to plan my schedule around those deadlines. And when I had extra time, I would work on writing my monthly column, “Discovering South Florida,” which usually took place during the weekend hours (not a problem for me).

Occasionally, I would add some assignments from another work source, an editorial services company that had been sending me sporadic freelance assignments for years. That would be last priority, though, because I was committed to the two new jobs that were giving me work on a regular basis. Also, the magazine publishers eventually added my name as "Copy Editor" to the magazine masthead, which was nice to see.

So there I had it — I was gainfully employed as an hourly editor for a couple different companies, and I even got to do some fun reporting and writing. All of it was basically flexible and remote. Except for some occasional meetups with the magazine publisher, I could do my work from anywhere.

Which takes me to my next subject.

As the spring turned to summer, and I knew that my job situation now was secure as well as flexible in every way, I began to ponder the possibility of heading north to live for a little while during the hot, hurricane-filled months.

In the active-adult, gated communities of South Florida, I had learned there were basically two classifications of residents: (a) the “year-rounders,” which I was out of necessity, because I had no other home to retreat to during the hot months; and (b) the “snowbirds,” who usually arrived here in the fall and departed for cooler pastures in the spring. The snowbirds had both their home down here and another home up north (typically in New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut), and like the real birds, they “flew” south or north on a pretty reliable schedule. Many of them put their cars on transport trucks for the twice-yearly trek.

There is another classification that’s not as commonly used: “snowflake,” which sounds a little derogatory but really isn’t. I soon learned that this is the term for people who aren’t yet retired and have a second home in Florida, where they typically flit down south for long weekends and vacations but don’t stay for a long time. I met some snowflakes here, and I realized that some of my friends in Northern Virginia would also fit that category, as they have a condo in Florida that they use for a vacation home before their retirement.

I was considered a year-rounder, but as more of my new friends began taking off for their life up north that spring, I began to wish that I, too, had another place to go for the summer. By June 2021, as it seemed that half of my community was gone, many houses and driveways stood empty, and fewer people were showing up for tennis, pickleball, and the pool, I hoped to find a way I could be a snowbird as well. But I definitely didn’t have the finances to afford a second place.

I also missed my young adult kids in Northern Virginia. I had been hoping for a while that my oldest son, Jacob, a 2020 college graduate in computer science, would get a two-bedroom apartment once he secured a full-time job after completing a training course to be a Salesforce software developer, and I could contribute to his rent and stay there sometimes with him. But that whole process was moving slower than expected, so I wouldn’t have a place to live up there as of yet. And even though I loved my home in Florida, and my kids would continue to visit me down here when they could, I longed to have a “snowbird” option as well.

I did have some vacations planned that summer: to Santa Fe, NM, to meet up with my mom and sisters, as well as a road trip to Key West with my daughter to vacation there with friends, and then a trip to the “other” (west) coast of Florida to see relatives. I went and enjoyed those trips and the people I was with, but still I hoped I could spend some time in Virginia with my sons.

As good timing and luck had it, my father called me mid-summer, and followed it up with another phone call in late July when I was in Key West, to say that he wanted to come live with me in Florida if I would have him, and to make it permanent. He had spent the past winter here with me before selling his condo in the Chicago area and moving into an independent living unit in a senior building there. He is 80 and does not enjoy living by himself in the retirement building, even with all the services and activities they offer. He said he wanted to live with me again, and he would contribute financially to do so.

So in mid-August, Dad flew down from Chicago for a long weekend, and we went over the logistics of him moving in with me. We discussed all the details, including how we would do meals, what furniture he would bring and how we would rearrange my house, what he would do while I worked from home during the day, how much he would pay me for rent and expenses, and everything else we could think of. We walked over to the community office and asked about the process of making him a permanent resident so he would have access to all of the amenities. He hoped to eventually be able to play cards at the clubhouse, use the swimming pool, and learn how to play pickleball and bocce ball in our recreation area.

But most of all, Dad wanted someone to sit and watch the news with at night, and to discuss the day’s current events. We both loved to watch Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and were pretty compatible in our views and opinions. My dad was lonely living by himself and having no one to do these things with. In turn, I missed my kids and needed financial help to be able to spend any substantial time up north near them. Our arrangement would be a good thing for both of us.

So, we had our plan. We talked about when he might want to move here, we opened up a local bank account for him to establish residency so he could get a Florida driver’s license or ID card when he returned, and we took care of some other details for his move to the area. Dad gave me two months’ rent upfront (by Venmo, which he knew how to do now!), and then I took him to the airport for his flight back to Chicago.

Just a week later, my dog and I flew into Washington, DC. We would be there for a month, from late August to late September. I was now a partial snowbird!

I stayed in an extended-stay suites hotel near my sons and my old swim-and-tennis club. I rented a car for the month, with my AARP discount. The trip was still expensive, but it was important for me to be able to do this, and to spend time with my sons and have them over for dinners and other things. My daughter, Rachel, had already returned to college for her sophomore year, but I had fortunately spent time with her in Florida in July.

My plan going forward now is to fly north every summer and spend around two months in the DC/VA area, where I can get away from the three H’s of summer in South Florida: the heat, the humidity, and the hurricanes. I’ll possibly stay with Jacob or maybe rent an Airbnb during that time, and I’ll arrive earlier in the summer than I did this year, so I can see Rachel as well. My father will fly back to Chicago during the same timeframe, so he can see and stay with family members that he’ll miss in Florida. And then together we’ll enjoy the balmy fall, winter, and spring of our southern home.

Fortunately for me, I have a small dog who travels well, a lightweight MacBook Air that I can easily pack for the trip, and a freelance career that I can do anywhere. So the snowbird life, or at least an abbreviated version of it, will be my new life. :-)

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