If you’d asked me in late 2024 how things were going, I’d probably have said, “Busy, but all good.”
That default freelancer answer, which means: I’m completely exhausted, but I don’t know how to stop. 😬

Looking back now, I think I knew deep down something was wrong – I just wasn’t able to acknowledge it.     And ironically, I didn’t have the time.

At the time, life looked fine from the outside. I was “girl bossing” it with the rest of them.
I’d been freelancing for over four years and had taken on a part-time role at a non-profit in spring 2024.            I say “part-time” but it was 28 hours a week, and roughly the same again in my freelance work.

So I essentially signed myself up for two almost full-time jobs. 🤦‍♀️

As anyone who has ridden the self-employed rollercoaster will know, I was desperate for a stable income for a while to ease the financial anxiety that freelancing comes with.

It was too much.
By anyone’s definition, it was too much.

But I needed the money.

I needed the stability that came with a regular income — the relief of not feeling that familiar pit in my stomach every month, wondering if my clients would pay on time.

It’s a struggle most freelancers and small business owners will relate to.

The money juggle is real — and it’s scary.

But it’s not something I want to shy away from, because talking about it matters.

And like many of us who work for ourselves, I told myself it was temporary — it’s just a busy season, I just need to get through this.

I ignored the foggy brain and the constant tightness in my chest, where I couldn’t breathe; I was so stressed. I said yes to everything, convinced I could push through.

I didn’t want to say no to the opportunities I’d worked so hard for.

As anyone who’s been self-employed for a while will tell you, the highs can be incredible — but the lows can hit just as hard.

And this one hit differently.

It wasn’t just another dip in motivation or a bad week.

It was a down I’d never experienced before — a slow unravelling that I didn’t recognise until I was right in the middle of it.

Going into December 2024, all the signs were there.

I was exhausted, running on fumes and ignoring what my body was trying to tell me.

I’d planned to take Christmas off, but that didn’t happen — not by choice.

It’s always a hectic time of year, but usually you push through knowing there’s a break waiting at the end.         I was desperate for that rest, but it wasn’t coming.

So I told myself what so many of us do: I’ll get through this bit, then rest later.

I convinced myself I could survive until spring, that once things quietened down, I’d finally stop. Winter has always been hard for me — I’ve struggled with seasonal dips and low energy — but I told myself, this too shall pass.

Except it didn’t.

I entered the New Year sick in bed with the flu and went back to work the very next day.

No reset, no recovery, no end in sight.

By then, my body was waving every red flag it could — and I still wasn’t listening. I struggled to sleep, would burst into tears at any moment, and couldn’t think “straight.”

It was like walking around in my own dense fog, watching life happen from the outside.

That was when something broke in me. Things couldn’t go on the way they had anymore.

I finally realised I’d hit burnout.

A week or so later — on what I later realised was Blue Monday (how fitting) — I hit the wall completely.

I remember sitting at my desk, staring at my screen, and nothing was computing.

My brain had shut down to the point I couldn’t comprehend anything in front of me. Tears poured down my face. I couldn’t string words together, couldn’t focus, couldn’t stop crying.

It felt like my body had finally pulled the plug before my mind had caught up.

This wasn’t tiredness. It wasn’t a bad day, week, month… It was my body saying, enough.

I was burned out.

Interestingly, burnout isn’t actually classified as a mental health condition. It’s recognised by the World Health Organisation as an ‘occupational phenomenon — a state of chronic stress that hasn’t been successfully managed.

But back then, I hadn’t really heard of it, let alone realised it applied to me. 

I thought burnout was something that happened to people in high-pressure corporate jobs, not to someone like me.

Yet the symptoms — the exhaustion, the fog, the tears — overlapped so closely with depression and anxiety (both of which I’ve experienced before) that it took me a while to see it for what it was.

For freelancers, it can creep in quietly.

There’s no HR department, no paid leave, no sick cover. Just you, your laptop, and a never-ending to-do list.

So there I was: not able to get out of bed, finally seeing what had been in front of me for a while.

What I’d known deep down and ignored for too long.
I had let it go too far, and something had to change.

After seeing my GP, I was signed off from my employed role — and honestly, that gave me a lifeline.

A small pocket of breathing space. I’d highly recommend speaking to your doctor if you’re feeling like it’s all becoming too much, especially if you’re balancing employment alongside freelance work (as so many of us do).

Having that time was a lifesaver.

It was like pressing pause on life — and for the first time in months, I could almost breathe again.

However, I couldn’t exactly “pause” my freelance work.

How do you stop when you’re the business?
Who covers you? Who pays you?

There’s no “sick note” to hand to your boss when you’re self-employed.

I couldn’t hit pause completely, because freelance work doesn’t work like that.

You either work and get paid, or you don’t — and risk losing the clients and the income.

So I made small changes instead:

💜I accepted that keeping my clients was more important for my mental health than stopping work.

💜I forced myself to say no to some things – the laundry could wait, and any email that caused me to feel my throat close up got a “not right now” in response.

💜I didn’t show up on social media as much as I had been.

💜And I got therapy.

I kept going. 

But the difference was I did so intentionally. 

And because keeping going felt easier than stopping in the moment.

Giving up would have tipped me over the edge. I needed to prove to myself that I could keep going. 

Keeping my clients felt safer for my mental health than letting them go.

It wasn’t the perfect recovery plan, but at that moment, survival was the goal.

Would I have done the same again? I don’t know. 

With hindsight, I wish I’d taken at least a week to rest properly. To truly stop.
But I was terrified that if I stopped for a week, it would turn into a month, and then there was no going back. 

And I was scared of what that silence might reveal — of who I’d be without my work. 

Therapy helped me see how deeply I’d tied my identity to my job.
I wasn’t Sarah who works in marketing. I was a freelance marketer, full stop. And the idea of stepping away from that felt like losing part of myself.

I think that’s something a lot of self-employed people struggle with.
We blur the lines between who we are and what we do — until the two become inseparable.

The rest of 2025 became a year of rebuilding — learning how to create a business that supported me, not drained me.

That’s where The Burnout-Free Business Series was born.
It’s my ongoing space to share what I’m learning about running a sustainable business as a freelancer — the good, the messy, and the honest middle bits we don’t often talk about.

Burnout was a turning point — it made me reimagine how I work and the kind of business I want to build.

It taught me that rest isn’t a reward; it’s part of the work.

If any of this sounds familiar — if you’re tired, stretched too thin, or quietly wondering how to keep going — you’re not alone.

I’m still figuring it out too, and that’s exactly what I write about every week in The Burnout-Free Business Series: honest reflections on building a business that fits your energy, not the other way round.