Ragged Riches

So, I’ve been feeling burnt out lately. I’ve been using Feel Free and Zana shots to make me crap out articles as per my job requirements. I am a full-time content creator and freelance writer, and it’s been rough.

Heck, I even broke down in tears recently because of a small thing—a pot that I asked to be cleaned was neglected, and I couldn’t shoot a video chat—right on camera. Not my proudest moment, but I’ve been going through it.

After getting a rejection letter from another client and being berated for not writing fast enough, I was feeling low about myself. Most of the time, I can shake it off but this time, I just couldn’t.

At one point this week, I actually burst into tears on video because I was so burnt out and so overwhelmed that I had a small “straw that broke the camel’s back” over a pot that wasn’t cleaned despite me asking someone to do it repeatedly.

Heck, I still feel low on myself. It takes a certain below-the-belt potshot to the ego when you’ve been applying for PAID W-2 jobs only to get nothing. I know I have the skills, but it’s not like I can force people to hire me.

So, I decided to do what I do best: get a massage, gear up for some modeling, and try to push through. Heck, I might actually bite the proverbial bullet and do more pinups for more sites.

I just really don’t want to rely on writing as much anymore. And I felt like I needed time to clear my head.

I went to get a massage, but things took a very odd turn.

No, no, it’s not a saucy story I’m telling you. It’s a story that will blow your mind in a different way. I struck up a conversation with my masseuse and kind of, well, whined.

There, I said it.

I whined a bit because she noticed I was on my phone, and every time I would look at my email, I’d physically tense up. I eventually explained to her the situation with a client from whom I walked off the job this week.

She was just so easy to talk to, it was as if I knew her before.

Something about the way she spoke was so familiar, like an influence I’ve been around my entire life. I was right. There was something familiar about the way she spoke. As it turns out, my masseuse was an English professor.

Well, no wonder I recognized the educated vibe. I grew up surrounded by professors. My jaw hit the floor. The more we talked, the more we realized we actually knew a lot of people in common and may have actually run into one another in the past. She’s a mad cool chick!

So, I mentioned what’s going on with work as a writer and how I’ve been dealing with asshole clients. I felt comfortable showing her some of the behavior I’ve been dealing with. I decided to whip out my phone and show her a rejection I got on Upwork. She balked.

“That’s awful. How rude. You don’t realize it, but if you’d have gotten him, he would have devalued you, berated you, and treated you terribly. Bullet dodged.”

I sat back and thought about it. The behavior of people constantly picking apart my work was what burned me out so bad in the first place. It’s what’s been killing my love of writing and why I want (at the very least) a part-time job telemarketing somewhere. Or to do retail.

As I went home, I turned Spotify on a random playlist, zoned out, then realized some of the lyrics.

They basically were saying, “As above, so below.”

What a synchronicity.

For those not in the know, “As above, so below” is a classic occult saying about the nature of the universe, humanity, and spirituality. There are a lot of different ways to understand this phrase, but it’s generally seen as a reflection of what’s going on.

In other words, your experience of the world is a reflection of what’s going on inside of you. If you are disorganized, depressed, and willing to let people walk all over you, your outside world will increasingly reflect that until you’re overwhelmed.

It also suggests that the same rules that guide us as individuals tend to be the same rules that will govern larger macrocosms—including our nations, our society, and even nature itself.

One of the most noticeable laws I noticed in my life is that most people will treat you the way you allow them to treat you.

This tends to be the way 99 percent of people behave. I try to find the other 1 percent that are better than that to befriend them. But for the most part, people generally default to what you will allow them to get away with.

I have internalized a lot of abuse, which means I question myself when I have people devalue me. I often assume it’s my fault. And because I am so laid back and desperate for opportunities, I have gotten used to bending over backward for people who are dangling opportunities in front of me.

My life is reflecting the fact that I’m so used to being kicked when I’m down. I don’t know if the Law of Attraction is real, because I do believe bad things happen to good people too often.

Looking back, though, it’s hard to ignore how often I allowed people to treat me foul simply because I really wanted them to hire me. And that’s only half the cycle: I end up going my own way, doing well, and then getting freelance clients.

The freelance clients (or even random freebie opportunities dangled in front of me) wreck my scheduling. It often results in me being dropped like a hot rock, after being berated by people who never really saw the value in what I bring to the table.

Me ignoring the law of putting up boundaries and demanding respect turns into my career issues. Breaking a law causes penalties. And now I’m seeing it happen in my own world.

Second, there’s a law of cause-and-effect.

If you do something, it will have an effect. If you trust the wrong tax professional, you might get an audit. If you trust the wrong friend, you might get betrayed. And if you end up biting off more than you can chew financially, you will end up poor.

When you end up poor, you end up beholden to people who will abuse you and exploit you—see rule one above. And if you turn that ship around, you’re going to have to take a lot of personal accountability for your actions.

Truth be told, it’s not always possible to turn the ship around, but you might as well try. I’m lucky enough to be in a position where I can try and stay sheltered while I try to find a job and a way to invest more in my work. But, I digress.

The other major law that I’ve noticed is that life has rhythms—and how you handle them changes the result.

Everything ebbs and flows. Right now, we’re seeing the stock market ebb. We’re seeing civil liberties ebb. Eventually, in time, it will flow again. Granted, we might not be alive for it, but we have to hope that we are.

When life is flowing, it’s important to keep an eye out for ebbs. You should be building up safety nets, diversifying things, and working on plans that help solidify your stability. My mistake was not really doing that when things were good.

Then Medium slashed payouts and BOOM, I was out. My income died on the spot and I couldn’t even get a job in time for me to save my apartment. I had no savings. I was bent on keeping up appearances. All of it ebbed away because I was foolish.

I guess it’s a mix of the law of cause and effect and the law of rhythms. Everything has a cause and effect. Everything has a rhythm. We need to use the good times to protect for the bad times—and ideally, manifest stuff that’s more stable than what we have.

I should have prepped better so that the rhythms wouldn’t have knocked me down as hard as they did.

Basically, my burnout might have been a one-two punch.

Being a content creator is not easy. In fact, it’s pretty brutal especially when you’re like me and scatterbrained and pulled a million different places—all of which you want to go. I want to do a million things and I generally would do well doing it if I had other people helping me out.

The problem was that I do get success, but it significantly ebbed when I was expecting it to flow. And I played my cards thinking that I would see a payoff when I didn’t—which is my fault. I was reckless and I honestly have this issue where I try to hide my poverty which doesn’t help anyone.

I ended up feeling Golden Handcuffs and ended up getting exploited and battered by really awful clients who honestly don’t appreciate what I bring to the table. That started a vicious cycle which drove me to use Feel Frees to keep up a schedule while also basically picking up the shards of my life.

The more I did that, the more my needs were put behind in the dust. I’ve always struggled with this and it’s gotten to the point where I’m working on quietly leaving a lot of people behind because I no longer feel like mending the relationships I had with them.

They say, “As above, so below,” and the truth is that I was so hellbent on overworking myself, getting immediate results, and numbing myself that everything kind of broke—including me. I lost the little spine I had because I just kept trying to make ends meet in hopes that someone would see my value.

But did I even value myself?

I don’t know. Logically, I know I’m awesome and bring a lot to the table. In practice, I keep putting everyone and everything ahead of me while hoping it’ll come back to me. It’s clear it’s not working. Does this mean I don’t value myself?

I don’t know, but I think it’s time for me to change things up. Maybe I’m breaking one of the laws of life without even realizing it or understanding how—and I’ve never seen breaking those rules to work well for anyone.