I Quit Freelancing, Here’s Why

My mental health is more important than a Paypal notification

4 min readOct 3, 2021

I enjoy weekly Paypal notifications however, I also enjoy my peace of mind and happiness. Yesterday, I quit freelancing and I don’t regret it. A bit of context before we get into the reasons why I quit the freelancing rollercoaster.

I quit my job as a political consultant in 2007 to work from home. I had no plans at the time, I just knew that I wanted to work from home. I set up an online music review magazine and it took off. I made some decent money however, I wanted a side income. I looked into freelance writing and got hired quite quickly.

The workload increased and I started outsourcing to other freelance writers. Eventually, my company Intrigue Media was born. At the time, I did a few side hustle writing gigs for extra money as well as revenue share writing and blogging. It was a lot of work but I was happy with the money so I put my head down and worked non-stop.

Fast forward to 2021, still running my business and still side hustling with a few writing gigs here and there. At one point, I was working 80 to 100 hours a week, too much, just too much.

Two weeks ago, one of my biggest freelance clients sent me a message on Slack asking me to send my last invoice, the work had dried up and they were shutting their company down. The message was all too familiar to me, over the years, I have received hundreds of messages like this.

Yesterday, after hours of deep thought, I decided to quit the freelance writing game and focus on my business. I will still write content for Medium and other platforms but no more client work. I deal with clients for my writing business however, I have a manager, several writers and three virtual assistants. I don’t need to focus on client work anymore, I am done. This writer is no longer for hire.