Issue #004 — The freelance year I almost quit
Two clients went quiet at the same time. The drafted resignation that never sent, and what got me through the bad part of year three.
Dear reader,
I almost quit freelancing in the autumn of my third year. I want to tell you about it, because I think it is the kind of thing nobody talks about until it is safely behind them, and that silence is part of why people quit alone.
The story is unremarkable, which is partly the point. Two clients went quiet at the same time — not fired me, just went quiet, in that particular way that lets you keep hoping for six weeks. My pipeline collapsed in slow motion. I had savings, technically, but the watching of them go down has its own gravity. I started taking work I did not want at rates I did not want, which is the freelance version of dignity collapse. I stopped sleeping properly. I drafted, more than once, the message that began I think I need to look for something stable.
I never sent it. Not because I am brave. Because I was tired, and the act of writing a CV felt like more friction than just surviving another week.
What got me through was unromantic. A friend asked me, very specifically: what is your number? Not how are you, which I could lie about. The number — what I needed in the bank to feel safe, to the dollar. I said it out loud. It was lower than I thought. I built a four-month plan to get there. The plan worked. The crisis ended slowly, which is how most crises end.
Here is what I learned, and what I would tell anyone in the bad part of year three:
The crisis is not a verdict on whether you are cut out for this. It is a verdict on the shape of your client portfolio, your runway, and your nervous system, all of which are fixable. The shame of it — the conviction that you are uniquely failing at something everyone else is fine at — is the most expensive part. Other people are quietly in their own version. The ones posting wins on LinkedIn are also, sometimes, drafting the same message you are.
If you are there now: name your number. Tell one person who can hold it without panicking. Make a plan that fits on one page. Then sleep, if you can.
The work you make on the other side of this is going to be different from the work you made before it. In ways you will eventually be glad about. Not yet.
Yours,
Enova