The Curse of Being Too Ambitious That Haunts Every Writer
I’m not yet sure where it will take me and how it will change my life.
The past few weeks have been quite different from how they used to be.
I used to wake up driven, excited, looking forward to my day, happy to solve new problems and take on new challenges. But in the past few weeks, I haven’t done much to accelerate my career or move towards where I want to be in the future.
You see, until October 2021, I had a freelance client who paid me pretty well for my articles. But then their funding was removed and they couldn’t afford my rates. So I had to let that gig go, cutting off about 30% of my monthly income.
NewsBreak, another platform I used to write on stopped their monthly base pay. That was another good portion of my monthly income cut off in an instant.
Both these things happened at similar times, like within two months of each other, and my monthly income was significantly impacted. This post is about how this uncertainty changed my life, and why I’m not immediately looking for new opportunities. I also talk about the curse of being too ambitious that possibly haunts every writer who dreams of building an online business someday soon.
Wanting something more
If this were like the normal times, I would have looked for another client to help me supplement my income source to make up for all that I had lost. But right now, I’m just not feeling motivated enough to look for a new client.
At this point in my career, I’m not sure if I want to keep writing for someone else. I still have one freelance client with who I’ve been working for almost a year. I feel so involved in the company that I feel it’s my own, and I’d keep doing so for the foreseeable future. I also have my Medium earnings, and, combined with my freelance income, I’m not worried about my finances.
But every year in the last two months, I had a plan for the next year, as in what I aim to do, how I plan to go about it, and things like that.
But this year, I have nothing. I know I don’t want to keep writing for clients, but I don’t know what I’ll do instead.
I know I want to build something of my own, but then I’m not sure what and how to go about it.
Every day, I write for an hour or so, work a bit on my business, do some freelance work, but every day, I feel I could have done so much more. This is exactly what I call the curse of being too ambitious.
Building something of my own
I used to get a lot of money writing for the client. And I know if I look for another client, I’ll get similar oran even more attractive salary than before.
But right now, I want more than just writing articles and website copy for someone.
And I feel that if I wasn’t this ambitious, if I had settled for writing for clients and been happy with the money and lifestyle they were offering, I wouldn’t have felt this way.
I wouldn’t have felt this dissatisfaction in my heart.
I wouldn’t have felt this need that I’m capable of doing much more than what I currently do.
Sometimes, ambition can make you feel a little discontent, which makes you desperate for new opportunities.
Waiting for vs actively seeking
I’ve always been a firm believer in the universe guiding me to where I’m meant to be.
For example, in 2020, I wasn’t looking for a platform like Medium, nor was I looking for a freelance client. They came to me when I least expected them.
And so, I am not actively looking for a client right now.
I want to have some space to welcome new opportunities in my life.
I want to keep my schedule free from appointments, meetings, and other things, so I can concentrate on attracting something that fills me with happiness.
For the time being, I’ll stick to doing what I love the most, i.e., writing about the lessons I have learned and how I can help people use them (the kind of content I’ve been posting on Medium and LinkedIn).
So, I will keep writing on Medium. I will keep writing on LinkedIn and I will wait for the perfect opportunity to come my way because I firmly believe that the universe will send something amazing soon. This will only happen if I’m patient enough to wait and not get desperate.
If you’ve ever felt this way, if you’ve ever felt that you are directionless to that you don’t know where you want to go, or if you want to settle with what you currently have, then comment below and let me know how you deal with this.
Because right now, I’m not sure what to make of this restlessness, this feeling of limbo that I’m stuck between suck in the nothingness between two opportunities.
And I’m not sure if I should go behind the one I can clearly see, which is a new writing client. Or should I wait for the next opportunity to come up, which I don’t know what it will be, but I want it to be something of my own?
Closing thoughts: embracing life’s uncertainties
I never imagined that being self-employed would fill my life with dilemmas like this.
Life, as such, is unpredictable, and the fluctuations hit harder when you’re self-employed.
You never know what lays in wait for you in the next corner. And sure, being self-employed isn’t the uphill ride I always imagined it would be, but it is filled with surprises and unexpected twists.
Every day is a new lesson, a new learning. Today’s lesson is that sometimes, waiting is the only thing you can do.
Sometimes, you just have to trust the process and keep doing what makes you happy. You need to be patient and believe that what is truly meant to be yours — something life-changing — will come your way soon.