45yo and I still struggle with the difference between 'made a mistake,' and *am a mistake.*

Fired from freelancing for a client and once-friendly acquaintance this week, because success at day job + a series of family health issues have made me hard to reach, and I couldn't prioritize clients like I once could.

It's a little bit of a relief, TBH, but also, heavy feelings of failure for having let the client down.

How do you strike the balance between with and side-hustle?

likehelpful
Posting as :
works at
You are currently posting as works at

You’re not a mistake 🤍 breaks my heart to read that. Your work doesn’t define you. Life has ups and downs. Be kind to yourself 🤍🤍

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1: Do you need to take the freelance? Do you need the money? Adding this extra work on your plate does take away time from family and time for yourself to recharge. This can affect your mood for sure and your outlook.

2: With so much on your plate, you must be stressed, worn out and unable to do your best with work or family.

3: When I was 40-45, I did need to talk with someone. Therapy can just be a check-in. Someone to talk to and gain a new perceptive.

Before you are so hard on yourself, take a beat. Slow down. Just focus on family and then work. Reset and see how you feel.

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1- Worth considering. Hard decision, because freelancing has always been there for us. shutting down will take time. I don't need the income as much as I once did, but I do have hard costs. Then, there's the fickleness of the industry. I've been unemployed 5x, due to layoffs, furloughs, etc. Freelancing has been the closest I have to a safety net, and usually serves as the creative stimulation and opportunity I miss out on during the 9-5.

2, 3 etc:
Thank you. You are more accurate than you imagine.

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Sometimes just communicating more can be all the difference between what looks like unreliable vs having human problems. Most people would understand if there were family/health issues involved. Maybe the failure was simply in lack of clear updates. That being said, clients need what they need. But they are also human and providing them with the ability to let the client know a simple version of "our CD is having a family emergency" can be all that is needed for people to understand we're real people will real lives.

Don't be so hard on yourself. If it's important to be reliable then you can be upfront that you can only commit X amount of time per week or that you wont be extremely reachable.

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Great, so imposter syndrome never goes away.

That's one way to look at it, I guess. But if this is imposter syndrome, I have a really rough case. I don't even understand why my own wife & kids like me.
I don't doubt that they do- I just think they're wrong.

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