Why I'm turning down a lot of freelance work.. for now

It’s quite a surprise to some people, that I’m saying “No” to most freelance work, or “sidelines” in Filipino language.

You’re about to get married, you’ll need the extra income!

To my closest friends and loved ones, they know exactly why.

Turning down work

This year was a great year for me to actually work on the things and study the stuff I am greatly interested at. After some personal projects and internal experiments on passive income that pays of most of my personal bills, I receive at least 2 dinner invites a month and 1-2 emails a week for this year.

There are, of course, the few outlier emails ranging from “Any tips and advice on my copywriting on our website to increase our conversion rates?” to “How do you deal with line-height and font-size ratios?”, and I give time to answer these questions.

But, the bulk of emails are along these lines:

“Are you available to do freelance work?”

The usual format goes about on describing who they are and what they do for a living, or what their company does. Most are currently employed at some BigCo and are seeking to team up in creating products or just outsourcing me for design work, some are legitimate real-life people I know that have interest in building up actual businesses with me.

But after much consideration, I turn most of them down, I turn them down gently.

Embracing that I am finite

You see, I could take all these requests up and actually fill my days and nights to increase my income, increase my market value and whatever buzzwords people come up with for career paths and putting up businesses.

Cutting out feeding ego and working out skill, surrendering the capability and arrogance to do all the work I can, I’ve decided to free myself up to pour out myself on the things that really matter in my life. I’ve heard enough elevator pitches and requests to last me what’s left of my 20’s, it’s time I actually spend my life on better things - because I embrace the reality that I am finite. That I will, inevitably, die. I take only the opportunities and doors that are aligned to God’s purpose in my life, because it’s Him is what I’m really after.

So turn down some things today, and pour your life on the things that, really at the end of the day, matters the most.

Right now, I’ll turn them down, maybe I would take some up in the future, or maybe not. What matters is I pour my time on the things that matters most in this season of my life.