Ep 70: When Good Freelance Projects Go Too Far - Navigating Scope Creep and Work Life Imbalance
I'm stuck in a freelancer's paradox: I'm working on a project I genuinely love—meaningful work, great client, good pay—but it's quietly consumed my entire life through gradual scope creep that tripled my workload without me really noticing. Now I'm sitting at my desk 12+ hours a day delivering live trainings, so exhausted that all I can do when I'm not working is watch TV and sleep, and I haven't seen friends in months because I'm completely tapped out. The tricky part? If I scale back to reclaim my life, I lose income I need, but I also can't keep running at this unsustainable pace forever. In this post, I'm naming the problem out loud (finally), walking through the warning signs I rationalized away, sharing the strategies I'm trying to implement (auditing scope creep, setting actual boundaries, planning difficult client conversations, building active recovery habits like my daily walks that I've abandoned), and working toward long-term solutions like raising rates and developing passive income—because good work that leaves no room for a good life isn't actually good, and maybe you need to hear that too.