I have been living in different countries, continuously traveling while working since becoming a freelancer. Last week this changed, I was on holidays, proper. While I’m still recovering from the travel itself, it created a lot of thoughts

this is nice

When I burned out and took 6 months without working, I knew I needed to find a way to get back to work without hurting myself again. It has been an interesting journey with its accompanying pitfalls. A delicate balancing act I’m still learning to this day.

When I switched from corporate to freelancer, I was lucky enough to not get too much work immediately. It really took about a year to fill up my week to a level that was acceptable (maybe 15-20 hours at the time). It made life stable in Thailand at the time, kept me learning, and left enough free space to be creative. I like to say that instead of a burnout, this was a controlled burn.

This pace worked for a while. I had a long period of hovering between 15-25 hours of work time most weeks and it feels great. This time is often spread across 6-7 days of the week, which really came down to half a day of work every day.

I was feeling fulfilled with this work, I could continue at this rate and develop my contracting skills, and not feel like I needed to stop at any point. Yet, in the horizon, I saw the shadow of a trap. And in the shadow I stepped, blissfully.

Uh oh

This trap must be the same all freelancer encounter, because one doesn’t have any regular hour and time in office set by a boss, one ends up working all the time instead. Well I was kinda doing this, but not full time at all, so I guess I was unscathed ?

In the past 6 months I had been juggling more clients and ended up having a few 40-50hrs weeks. Way more than I would’ve liked to have. This was a bad signal, yet I was holding okay, but I didn’t know for how long.

I luckily was able to stop some work and regain some free time. I guess this is an added value of freelancing: the option to say no. It’s here, but it is still as hard voice it, and sometimes, well, you need the money.

escape

In the past few month a special trip was getting planned for summer. A short trip this time. I regularly travel at least a month at a time, this one was just about 10 days. I didn’t want to work at all while there. It felt like a good time to disconnect completely from slack and screens and just be.

I felt awkward leaving messages to client “I’m going to be offline for 10 days”. But I had to. There was no way I would compromise on that. I also knew that if anybody worked with me and had a problem with that, they weren’t a good client for me to keep.

And so I went, on this holiday. The laptop stayed in the bag and my screen-time fell (as much as I could). It felt liberating and almost odd. Waking up without this immediate routine takes a bit to get used to.

caught up

The 10 days, expectedly, flew by. In a blink of an eye, I was on a plane back to Taiwan, and back into my routine here. Yet this time coming home felt way different.

10 days of full holidays are much more intense than a month of working and traveling. The ability to fully lose myself to a new place and forget (deeply forget) the routines I’ve built in the past years is powerful, and destabilizing.

Not having to work really made the trip worth, given the short time. You can’t really afford to lose half a day and stay in front of a screen. While intense, I knew that this was the right choice and had to keep this in mind for myself.

However, it also sucks for different reasons. Getting back into a rhythm after 10 days fully out is really hard. I feel like I have to relearn a lot of stuff, not only around my work but also around my daily habits. Everything feels more foreign, and require more effort to get back into. It’s not insurmountable, but it definitely makes for a few floaty days where you’re not on track just yet.

In some ways, this experience reminded me a lot of my non-sober days. It feels like I had been micro-dosing holidays for 4 years, never feeling so bad and being able to enjoy things quite often. Suddenly I took a big hit. It felt great, but now I have a big headache, I just want to lay in bed and not think about this hangover I need to recover from.

Anyway, I am now back from honolulu and the train of thoughts is moving again. It will hopefully reach a steady pace of living soon, and I’ll be able to continue my inner travel, happily.