Running an Editorial Business in an Extended Power Outage (and the Privileges of Having a Strong Support Network)

How a self-employed editor made it through an extended power outage without missing any work, and reflections on the fact that a lot of people weren’t so lucky.

Boulder, Colorado, has a power problem. Xcel Energy’s state-sanctioned monopoly on providing electricity to the city and unincorporated Boulder County means the company doesn’t really have to answer to its customers. There’s a decade-old debate surrounding what to do about this, and so far the status quo has prevailed. But some residents are getting increasingly impatient as Xcel’s default strategy for dealing with high winds is to preemptively cut power to big swaths of the city and county for days at a time. Yes, this is one way to avoid wind-sparked fires like 2022’s Marshall Fire; a downed Xcel line with power still flowing through it is believed to have been an ignition point in that devastating blaze. But the fact is that Xcel is beholden primarily to its shareholders rather than its customers, which means profits take priority over infrastructure improvements like burying the power lines so wind storms won’t pose such a threat to the grid—storms that have grown increasingly extreme, are coming more frequently, and are lasting longer.

Trying to struggle through it

So what’s a self-employed editor with a boatload of online work supposed to do when she learns that her power, and therefore her home internet connection, will be out from Wednesday morning until who knows when? Well, what I initially did was try to power through it (no pun intended). My family charged all our devices and our backup chargers ahead of time, filled lots of drinking water containers before the water filtration system lost power, and stocked up on food that would require neither cooking nor refrigeration. I activated the mobile hotspot and got to work . . . 

Until I realized that the mobile hotspot didn’t have enough bandwidth to send the files that were due that day. For one thing, they were some pretty big files; for another thing, everyone in the area was relying on the same cellular networks to do everything their wifi would normally be doing. At this point I had kind of a meltdown. I had already taken the risk of relocating my home office to my sister’s place. She was out of town, and her power was scheduled to be restored by the time I got there, whereas our power was expected to be out for much longer. But of course when I arrived there was still no power at her house either. So I used my hotspot to work on these files for two hours, and when I tried to transfer them back to the client they kept failing to send. I knew I wouldn’t be able to bill for those hours if I didn’t deliver the edited work, and I was scrambling to figure out where I could go to send the files and get the next day’s work done too. The public libraries were included in the power outage, and communication from Xcel about which parts of town did have power was vague and inconsistent (and often wrong, according to the local subreddit).

A safe haven

So the family and I started brainstorming. After a couple phone calls, we made arrangements to go to my brother and sister-in-law’s house in Fort Collins, about an hour away, and stay there until power was restored. We packed up our aging cats (who NEVER leave the house except to go to the vet, so they were pretty alarmed to see the cat carriers come out of the garage), a few days’ worth of clothes and toiletries, and all the food we had bought in anticipation of the outage. Then we abandoned our mountain home for an impromptu getaway at a place with heat and running water (and good company). Ahhh. 

We ended up having a lovely four days in Fort Collins while Xcel worked to restore power to our neighborhood and everywhere else. Crews have to manually inspect every line before activating them again, and some areas didn’t get their power back for more than a week. During the outage I was fortunate to have the resources to get all my work done, with only a little bit of struggle that first day. But what if we didn’t have family nearby? Or what if our family wasn’t in any position to help us? For instance, my sister’s house in Boulder was similarly affected by the outage, so going there was no help. I also have a sister and a brother in nearby Longmont, where they have a municipal utility rather than a contract with Xcel (which means they have buried lines and didn’t need to cut power during these winds to reduce the risk of fires). But neither of my siblings in Longmont could help us; my sister lives with three dogs with whom my cats are not compatible (to put it mildly), and my brother simply doesn’t have the space to house me, my spouse, my mom, and our cats. Even with so many loved ones nearby, it wasn’t easy to find somewhere to go, but we did.

What about everyone else?

This got me thinking about all the people who don’t have the privilege of a strong support network. We were incredibly lucky to have family that could take us in for a few days, and I simply don’t know what we would have done without them. Some of our local friends ended up going to a hotel in Denver, shelling out a bunch of money just to have a warm place to sleep. Other friends suffered through the cold nights and the dark days in their homes, bundling up in coats and blankets, subsisting on what basically amounted to snack food (after all, you want to keep the fridge closed in the hopes that it will keep your perishables cold enough if it stays sealed—many, many residents lost hundreds of dollars worth of food to spoilage regardless—and you can’t use the stove or the microwave in any event!). And all the businesses in the outage zone had no choice but to close down for three to five days in the week before Christmas, the busiest time of year for many of them (while restaurants also lost thousands of dollars’ worth of perishable food).

Rich in what matters

I figured my first blog post on my newly published website would be a pretty good place to express my gratitude for all the support I have as a (very) small business owner. I have great clients, a wonderful family, and the kind of safety net that’s far from guaranteed in today’s world. I wish everyone had the network of support that I enjoy. As I look at 2026, I hope things get better for all of us. (And I hope Boulder County can finally make some moves to hold Xcel Energy accountable for investing in stock buybacks for its shareholders instead of upgrading our failing infrastructure.)

This tree was uprooted in the wind storm. Luckily it didn’t take down any power lines, but several weeks later it’s still perched precariously on this hillside directly above the road to our house. I took this picture from the passenger seat as we drove by. It’s been reported as a hazard to the county roads division, but who knows how long it will dangle there before it gets removed.