Science writing suits me well. It combines a lot of my interests and skills. I’ve always loved to write, I enjoy learning new things all the time, I love the flexibility and control I have being self-employed, and over time, I feel like I’ve been able to write things that make a real difference. For seven years, I wrote the Math Trek column for Science News. I loved it, because through the different stories, I could paint a picture of the breadth of mathematics. I was trying to show people all the different things mathematics can be, and to let them see the beautiful and surprising things that are revealed when you look at the world through a mathematical lens. And people really loved the column – for years, it was the single most popular thing on the entire Science News website. People of course have often had such traumatic experiences with math, but my experience is that means they get even more excited when they read something about math and find that they can understand and enjoy it. It felt to me like a small way of healing some of the wounds of this world. For many years, I struggled with chronic fatigue syndrome. Freelancing was great because it could accommodate the ups and downs in my health. Then in 2011, I got so sick that I often couldn’t turn over in bed. That did pretty bad things to my career for a while, but even there, science writing ended up serving me well. I’ve written a book about my experiences with chronic fatigue syndrome, describing the science, politics and history of the disease and other poorly understood illnesses. It’s called Through the Shadowlands: A Science Writer’s Odyssey into an Illness Science Doesn’t Understand. www.throughtheshadowlands.com.