The ups and downs of 2022 so far. And what I've learned from them.
January 2022 – The highs
2022 started off on a high, with a holiday! My partner and I both have our birthdays at the start of the year, so we decided we should take a break to celebrate. This had been our plan last year, but the birthday break was scuppered by Covid. We rebooked for this year and headed off to a cabin on a farm in the Lincolnshire Wolds (with a hot tub no less!).
We spent a blissful 10 days relaxing, walking, puzzling, playing games and watching films. I came back to work refreshed and ready to start a major project for a great new client that had been booked in before Christmas.
That project – on how Covid has impacted the shea sector in Burkina Faso – lasted the rest of the month. While it was certainly not plain sailing, it was interesting, enjoyable and well-paced. I had time to review my 2021 goals and set some new goals for Q1 of 2022 (working towards my full review in October).
January was otherwise uneventful, in a good way.
February 2022 – The lows
I had another few projects lined up for February. They were smaller with gaps in between, making the month feel disjointed and fairly quiet overall. I struggled to focus on some of my goals (like posting my blog, getting back on social media and contacting potential clients), but did get plenty of DIY done at home.
February wasn’t bad, it was just “meh”.
March 2022 – Everything all at once
The first week of March 2022 was without exaggeration the worst week I have ever had. I went through the most emotionally and physically difficult experience of my life so far. I’m not trying to be cryptic, I just don’t want to talk about something so personal on a public forum. I only mention it because it’s relevant to this post.
Less than a week later I was back at work; I even spoke at the CIOL conference. Overall the conference was fantastic. It was such a welcome pleasure to see colleagues in person and learn from all the wonderful speakers. I don’t know if I would have taken more time off if I were employed, since work was indeed a welcome distraction.
The problem wasn’t so much the work, but the type of work I took on and that I felt I couldn’t/shouldn’t(?) turn it down. I had three important projects, each lasting about a week, with very tight deadlines.
The first was a project for a new client I had been recommended to and who I am so lucky to have had the opportunity to work with. The second was a recurring project for an agency client. I didn’t want it to go to someone else both because I was reluctant to possibly lose the future revenue and because it’s such a fiddly, time consuming project. The last was from an existing direct client who I didn’t want to let down (and I love the work).
Those three projects had me working overtime until the end of the month. I’m happy with the results on all three and was fortunate to have fantastic support from colleagues Belinda Allen and Claire Ivins. I was also fortunate that the deadline for the last project was extended by two days by the client when I explained how tight it was.
Unsurprisingly, in the last week of March I got a nasty chest infection (apparently not Covid according to the many tests I took). I felt wretched from lack of sleep and am just about recovering as we move into April.
My point? Working as a freelancer has it’s ups and downs and sometimes it’s just too much. We have to juggle varying workloads, client requests and the demands we put on ourselves. We all do things we know we shouldn’t sometimes and I probably shouldn’t have thrown myself into work quite so hard.
So what can I do differently next time? I know I have colleagues I can rely on to share the burden (and they’re often more than willing to), so I need to turn to them more readily. I also need to work on being more emotionally aware and person oriented than goal oriented. That means showing myself more compassion too.
I don’t usually write about my personal life here, but I haven’t written in a while and I wanted to share why in the hopes it might help someone reading feel less alone. Maybe you might even learn something (what not to do) from my cautionary tale.
On the point of talking about your personal life, especially to clients, I am very much looking forward to Michael Robson’s talk, Honesty: Is it the best policy?, at the ITI Conference in May. I think I’ll have a lot to learn from his experience (even if the lesson does come a couple of months too late).
A final thought: when I’ve been through a difficult time, I’m always reminded how lucky I am to have such a supportive circle of family, friends and colleagues. The knowledge that they are there makes me smile, even on the darkest days.
