'Blue Monday': The pressure to be happy as a freelancer

It's OK to say you don't always love being self-employed!

Going self-employed is often shrouded in glee. There’s either the thrilling moment when you resign, the ‘I’m going for it’ excitement as you send off your details to old contacts, or register a trademark and make the social media for your company live. The changing of profile names, or launching your website. Telling people ‘yes, I’m self-employed now’ like you have found a secret treasure trove of work happiness, a place to exist where no person commands you, nobody is the boss of you.

Sometimes the realities can come as more of a shock. How having more than one client actually means you have more than one ‘boss of you’, or how it can be scary, lonely, worrying how the hell you are supposed to make your own money to pay the bills. After all, even in a job we hated, the salary still landed in our accounts each month.

And especially on a day like today – so-called Blue Monday – when we are supposed to be at our most ‘down’ or depressed. OK, so the day itself is to be taken with a pinch of salt, as it turns out it was first announced as a PR exercise (have a google of Sky Travel and Blue Monday). Marketing genius aside, which arguably the whole concept is, it’s become a day when we speak about mental health and I want to use it to write in particular about freelance mental health and how we can try to find balance as freelancers. As our social media feeds fill up with notifications to either be happy, or less blue, or embrace the blue, what of the realities of being a freelancer, day to day? And why do we feel we have to be nailing it, bossing it, smashing it and winning all the time?

In particular I want to look at the concept that freelancing isn’t always perfect. On days like today, with the world talking about Blue Monday, we can be prone to thinking nothing is going right and that we are not doing well as a freelancer. Well, that’s OK. It’s normal. Not every day will be blue, but it’s not only Mondays either.

Feeling depressed as a freelancer is all too common. Last June IPSE reported a 200% increase in freelancers with mental health problems in the previous year.

Going from 6% up to 20%, people said their mental health had deteriorated in the pandemic. I’m definitely one of them. IPSE also found this change in our mental health can affect our work, from productivity to even having to cancel projects. Is that you? I know it’s me! I have to try hard to stay productive, and right now am battling the January Ghosting Blues, too, where every ‘Hey, want to chat about working with me?!’ email seems to be falling on deaf ears.

I worked with Viking on a survey they produced in 2020, which found that 64% of us regularly feel lonely because of our work. 59% suffer work-related anxiety.

I believe we are under a lot of pressure to be happy all the time as freelancers, as if we have found the perfect colour of grass while everyone sees our grass as greener. That we’ve nailed the work/life balance, the flexibility and the six-figure incomes. The reality is that we are often struggling, we often don’t actually like being freelance and we often think about going back to a ‘real job’. Not many days go by when I don’t scroll the jobs pages of different sites, wondering if I should apply for a ‘full time job’.

And I’m here to say to you that we don’t have to be perfect all the time! We don’t have to enjoy it all the time! It’s our job, not our mission. We’re not philanthropists, we’re people trying to build businesses and, some days, that’s HARD AF. So if it feels that way, it’s not you, it’s life. It’s one of those days. And it’s OK to say it if someone asks. You don’t have to say everything is rosy just because there are certain expectations of being freelance. That’s the thing with being self-employed - there are a lot of other people’s expectations – as well as our own - to deal with. I have experienced some of these first hand, for sure.

The ‘it’s OK for you, you can take time off whenever you want’ to the ‘Oh, having a coffee in the daytime again?’ vibes. People who work in ‘real jobs’ AKA staff jobs or PAYE roles are expected to check in, to be ‘seen’ by their boss. Even when working from home during the pandemic it was about being online, being a green dot on the screen. Not so, it can be assumed, for freelancers.

There’s the idea that we are so uber-flexible that we spend half the day doing Yoga and the other half drinking herbal tea, or writing proposals in our loungewear under the duvet. Some of us are night owls, and then sleep all morning, or indulge in Netflix at 5pm when those who toil for ‘the man’ are still in meetings.

The biggest pressures, however, are from ourselves. They’re our own expectations. I often find myself feeling guilty because I’m not at my desk, or computer. That because I’m not facing a screen, creating content or producing something tangible such as an article, I’m failing. It is very hard to see the ‘out and about’ time as work. I’m trying to book a week off to go and see family in France and my first thought is ‘If I get the train I can work!’.

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A post shared by Jenny Stallard Freelance Feels (@freelance_feels)

I struggle with freelancer guilt, and it’s something I’m working on – I often have amazing moments of clarity on a walk, or when I’ve clocked off from the screen to do some exercise. It feels like a cliché but it’s true. Not being at our desks can provide the best work moments.

I often write things in my head – this piece is a good example – wondering over the words, pondering over the angle and the imagery (I did the image in bed on Sunday morning with a glass of orange juice and the dogs on the bed). I wonder sometimes if we should have timesheets, and that maybe some of you do! Do you write down the time you are working, even when not at your desk?

All this can make it sound like freelancing is a bad experience. That’s why I’m writing this – to say that while I want to be realistic, that, of course, there are lots of positives. The flexibility does work in our favour. I DO like to be able to go on a long walk instead of a commute to the office! I like to clock off at 5 and take my freelancer guilt to the yoga mat. I enjoy mid-week coffees knowing that friends in ‘staff jobs’ are on teams calls they might not need to be or don’t want to be in. I know that I can change what I do with the flick of a switch – to retrain without permission from my line manager, to add to my skills without having to have a meeting with HR. I can change my rates, try and find new income streams and I don’t have to ask the boss, my colleagues or my manager.

The thing is, as a freelancer, a lot of the reasons why we might be ‘blue’ as today’s title suggests, tie in with each other. There’s the ghosting, the financial side of things, the loneliness. I find they are all woven together by tiny threads, like the spider’s webs I see glistening in the sun on my morning walks. We’re worried about money, it makes us anxious. The same anxiety stops us from approaching a potential new client. Round in a little circle we go.

For Blue Monday, I’d like to finish with some specific ways we can address (beat is not a word I wish to use!) the feelings we have as freelancers. Community is key, but it means different things to each of us. Some thrive in the freelance Facebook groups (I like them and often post) while others don’t like that platform. Some lurk on Insta while others shout. Some wouldn’t dare go for a coffee with a local freelancer while others are based in a café mainlining caffeine, emails and ‘dates’.

We can reach out to another freelancer and say hello, unfollow people who are not serving us (I’ve actually done that with a lot of celebs lately, I was comparing myself to them all the time!), or we can take time away from social media. We can go on a ‘netwalk’ where we take that walk but with a freelance friend. We can make a plan for the year that helps us feel in control. We can shout, scream, sing, dance or cry the feelings out and/or away.

Today is also ‘Brew Monday’, an initiative by the Samaritans to get us talking. It’s about reaching out to the people you care about – I love the sound of it.

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A post shared by Samaritans (@samaritanscharity)

There are ways I can help you with these feelings, too. As a coach I run group sessions for people who are feeling ‘meh’ about freelancing – the next one begins on February 7th.

It’s called Relight Your Freelance Fire and it’s all themed around fire – how we fuel our fire, what we need to keep it burning, how we’d like it to look.

People who come on the course say they feel refreshed, clearer and most of all a sense of ‘I’m not alone in this’. I’d love it if you think it might be for you, and if you would like to know more you can set up a call to ask me any questions.

I run the course with a maximum of five people so that we keep things nice and intimate and everyone has a chance to share and speak.

This link takes you to an online calendar where you can book a call with me to chat about it.

You could also enquire about individual coaching – use the same link to book a slot or drop me an email if you’d rather talk on the phone rather than Zoom.