Wake Up, There's A Battle To Fight

Have you ever looked at a word for so long it doesn't look like that word any more? So long that it doesn't seem to make sense any more? The word freelance has been a little bit like that for me lately. I've been working as a 'Freelance Musician, Vocal Coach & Educator' for years now, but every now and then I analyse what it is I am doing, what I am offering, how I am going about it and perhaps most importantly, how successfully I am doing it. Freelance. Free Lance. Free-lance. What does it mean? We're all at it. Let's go back to basics. I've always had a notion in the back of my mind that the term came from a historical novel of some sort, and it turns out I was right. For all there is, apparently, written reference made to the idea of a freelance or a free agent as far back as 1713, it seems to be generally acknowledged that the word Freelance (or at least Free Lance) was