Emotions of Self-Employment (A Series)

The discomformt of getting paid

Self-employment Week: 75

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One thing I never felt when I had a job was guilt when the salary hit my account.

More often than not, employees feel underpaid & overworked. You’re constantly looking for opportunities to get more money for the work you’re already doing.

But now that I work for myself, I feel rather undeserving at times (all the time) when I send an invoice & receive the payment.

I don’t look forward to it, I honestly kinda dread it. And once I receive it, I immediately transfer it to a joint account that I share with my partner so I don’t have to look at it anymore.

When you go independent, you take an immense amount of responsibility on yourself.

You cultivate an unwavering understanding that you must wholeheartedly believe in and rely on yourself. That’s the only way you can keep doing this.

So, as a result, you try to do a lot. You expect a lot & keep raising the bar for yourself. Which makes it hard to ever think you’re doing enough.

I used to feel like I was doing enough every single day at my job. I would pat myself on the back at the end of every work day, irrespective of if I worked 4 hours that day or 8.

I felt like I had given enough to my job because I didn’t think I needed to give a lot in the first place.

But now that I work with clients directly, under my own name, I never feel like I’m doing enough because I feel like I need to give all of myself to the work.

All of my time.

All my ideas.

All my skills.

And because it’s not possible to give it all, or even quantify what ‘all’ is, I always feel like I didn’t do enough & hence undeserving of the amount we both agreed to as compensation for this.

I feel this way when I send out a $3000 invoice & I feel the exact same way when I send over a $300 invoice.

It’s the feeling that I could have done more.

Even though the goal was accomplished, I could have done a little more.