#77: Greetings from Boomtown
Dealing with the feast or famine cycle of self-employment.
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Greetings from Boomtown
Hello, LOLers. This one’s going to be a quickie because, well…I am currently drowning in work (but in a good way! Mostly!).
I’ve written before about the feast or famine nature of self-employment. Some months, I’m staring at my inbox, refreshing it like a slot machine, praying that something—anything—will hit. Other months, like this one, everything lands all at once. And because I know another famine could be lurking around the corner, I’m saying yes to as many things as humanly possible, stacking projects like a game of precarious Jenga, hoping I don’t topple over from exhaustion.
So what does this look like in practice? It means two different clients with the same deadline. It means working late nights, weekends, and squeezing edits between bites of hastily microwaved leftovers. It means saying, “I’m right on top of that, Rose!” even when you’re not. It means feeling wildly grateful for the work but also whispering to myself, Is this sustainable? Probably not. But let’s go with it!
It’s a carnival ride, but one I chose. And I’d rather be here than sitting in back-to-back meetings wondering what I’m really meant to be doing with my life. So for now, I’m feasting. Ask me again next month, and I might be back in famine mode, obsessively checking my bank account balance.
Tell me: Self-employed readers, how do you handle the feast or famine cycle?
Do you stockpile work when it’s flowing, or are you better at setting boundaries? How do you deal with concurrent deadlines on several projects? Teach me your ways!
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