I hate letting people down even those I’ve never met

Quitting my freelance job was hard!

Photo by engin akyurt on Unsplash

Putting yourself first shouldn’t make you feel guilty but it does. At least it does for me.

I recently got an editing job and it was quite a difficult process just to get accepted to the training stage.

However, not long after I got another job with the charity I volunteer for. I’ve just had my first couple of weeks and I am over-the-moon happy with this opportunity. It feels like a step in the right career direction (finally) and I am working with an amazing team whilst doing interesting and rewarding work (who knew jobs like this existed).

The problem I found is I couldn’t do both roles, or maybe I just didn’t want to.

I originally decided to go through the training stage for my freelance role whilst starting my new job. During my first week, I did 8 hour days having numerous video meetings plus 2 or 3 hours extra of editing work. The editing job came with a 35-page style guide. Let’s just say I was tired!

I kept telling myself just to make it through the training stage and see what happens, but what then? I’d be working full-time and then fitting in extra hours in the evenings and weekends to work on editing.

Whilst I’m happy to do occasional freelance work this role required at least 10 hours a week. With a full-time job, a volunteer role, and trying to fit in some occasional writing this would be impossible. My hobbies and creative writing would be pushed to the side and I don’t want to give up the things I love for some extra money.

You might ask why I bothered to start the training but I felt that since I had applied and signed up I owed it to the team to see it through.

After the first few training sessions, I felt the role wasn’t quite for me — it was editing scientific work which is not my specialty (I prefer editing fiction or humanities work). But I kept going in a true people-pleasing style.

I hate letting people down, even people I have never met. My whole application and training process was done over email but I still felt the need to impress and work hard for the team.