ruhayatx

...you already have at least a retainer client that can cover your basic monthly expenses.

I did freelance work for 8 months after leaving a cushy corporate job. It was fun at first, but then my savings started running out. And then the nitty gritty of dealing with the new life set in. It requires a whole new lifestyle, one where you have to take absolute responsibility in areas where, in a company, you’d have other people helping out.

Some people can handle that kind of multi-tasking. If you have the clients, the freedom can be good. But in the end it was too much for me to handle on my own, so I set up a proper company instead.

Sometimes I feel like I don’t deserve what I have. Like somehow I have been simply lucky to get them. People keep telling me how they admire me and stuff, but I just don’t feel or see the same things they see in me. To me, I’m just me.

And I still have this need for external validation.

It doesn’t help that sometimes people around me say the same thing. But I have learned to dismiss such people and keep my distance from them cos most off the time they are just bitter and disappointed with their own failures.

I did have joy in my life 2 years ago. That was when I first started up my company. I just bought my own place. and I had a book out. Life was good. And then it became life again, mundane and routine.

It seems to me that you need to keep doing new things to keep your life fresh. I know people who are comfortable with just doing the same things day in day out, and they seem happy. But I’m not built like that, I guess.

So my challenge is to find joy, and then figure out a way to keep it going in my life.