The Freelance Issue No. 4 // Feeling Overwhelmed

Hello lovely you reading this, yes this blog still exists...even though it got very quite around here in the past few weeks. Not because I do not want to blog and design, fact is I have just been very busy taking care of several things, working a lot and just feeling really burnt out not being able to continue like this. Yes, I am feeling overwhelmed...and when that feeling comes up, I have to cut back on everything if I don't want to burn out completely. My to-do-list seems never-ending and as you know I also work as a language teacher to make sure I can pay all my bills and work on my freelancer's life but as much as I like teaching, it takes a lot of time and energy and in the past few weeks I was teaching a lot. So much that no time was left for anything else.

Besides that living in a a full-blown bureaucracy state, I also spend lots of time dealing with...well you guessed it, bureaucracy. And believe me my friend, that is very time consuming - needless to say that it also is a pain in the ass. Where should I start, monthly I have to deal with the tax office, health insurance is another big issue - just setting the course for the future as a freelancer in this country is a job itself because when being a freelancer you face challenges here that you did not even know they exist before, also here we are back at the main problem - health insurance and pension insurance. I will write another blog post just providing information on that sometime in the future. 

But, I realise how much I miss blogging and designing, so I slowly want to get back into as soon as I have a little more energy. I still have to finish two client projects and I have a long list of personal projects that I want to work on as well. And truth is, being creative gives me energy. Lately I tried to relax and recharge my batteries mainly through consuming (reading, looking at designs, photography and illustrations that I admire) but maybe and just maybe that is the wrong approach and instead creating and getting back to designing, writing, sketching and photographing will help me better to recharge my batteries and to get out of my hiatus mode. I will give it a try and we will see, how does that sound to you?

So here I am saying good bye to feeling overwhelmed and a little burnt out. Here it is to getting back into the things I love that nourish my heart and soul. How was that; do more of what makes you happy! And yes, that is what I am trying to do now. Here I said it, so please hold me accountable for it and if I disappear again please don't shy away to sending me a note asking me why I stopped designing and writing because hearing from you might be the best motivation for me to get back to it and to get my shit back together and not to give up even if times are rough and I am still not seeing the results I am aiming for. But as we know, establishing yourself as a freelance designer takes a lot of time and work - people tend to forget that and many content creators/freelancers don't openly talk about it how long it took to establish themselves. I want more honesty and transparency in the freelancer and blogger world because how should newbies know what to expect when people are not providing truthful information. I am finishing this post here for now and hopefully I'll be back soon with more blog posts. xx, Phyllis