Time to Face The Music
You decide to go freelance in an era where more and more people are looking to be one. Competition is deemed to be fierce.
And the vision of our goal is like a dark endless tunnel. There seems to be no reaching it any time soon.
It’s anything but easy. And there’s too much going on: finances, a full-time job, partners, children, lockdowns, Winter… You put all available time into it and it seems like it’s just not going anywhere. Everyday it feels like you are swimming against the stream, like all the traffic lights are red, all the level crossings down…
You want to believe it will work. You gave up more times you would like to admit. You still go through the same struggles. Nothing you do seems to be working.
Your Impostor Syndrome is still lingering… Your fear of public embarrassment of making publicly visible mistakes is always with you: “Everyone is going to think I’m a failure. A joke. That I’m nothing but a wanna be.”
Who in their right mind nowadays would think the simple act of writing can provide you with a living?
Shake Off the White Noise
All those fancy marketing strategies and promises to give you the overnight solution to getting more visibility and public recognition of your brilliant talent.
But you keep looking at your social media feeds. You see all these nice photos of other pseudo-freelancers that made it.
These entrepreneurial coaches that promise to change your perspective in a life-changing programme.
“You too can be your own boss and get a 6-figure income!”
The over-romanticised vue of the freelancer working from home can be as off putting as inspiring.
You can’t help but feeling inapt, unskilled, a professional misfit. Usually promoted by gorgeous fit and sophisticated people, under the perfect landscape, the perfect light, they portray the lifestyle most of us dream of.
We all know those are digitally pimped photos and that real freelancers don’t really look like that.
Before
We all have things to juggle with. We are all multitasking in our lives.
There is so much pressure, so much competition for popularity, so much disproportionate ambition resulting from the constant defficient information we are being fed on a nano-second basis.
After
Facebook, Google, Alexa, Microsoft, are all working in chaotic unison. Have you ever connected the dots of when you have a conversation around a tech device (your phone, Alexa…) that your news feeds across all platforms will be bombarded with sponsored-related ads?
Or did you really think it was all an act of the mystical powers that surround us? All of the world is finally becoming One? Romantic, right?
Take Time Off The Internet
(not just Social Media!)
It’s overwhelming. Just think about how much time you waste daily reading fake news, dismembered and unrealiable sourced pieces of information.
If we take some time to think about it at least 75% of it adds nothing to our lives, and would have made no difference if we hadn’t read it.
We subscribe to useless Newsletters and mailing lists only to find we don’t have the time (interest or patience) to read them all. Scanning through the email headers and cherry-picking the most interesting ones, and if you’re like me, unsubscribing some of those only a few days after subscribing ‘cause it’s too much.
Go for walks every so often. Mingle with nature, interact with the elements, use your five senses to help you find alternative and more vibrant ways to write. It works for me.
Taking time off technology can only be beneficial to our mental health. The decrease in the stress level is oppositely proportional to the level of self-confidence we achieve.
Having an offline break contributes to inspiration, away from all the neuro-stimulus incited by the all of the colours and movement around the internet. Similar to those of a hypnosis I would imagine…
Photos by Anthony DeRosas, Andrea Piacquadio, Yan, Anastasia Shuraeva, Prateek Katyal, Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels
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