Long post - TL/DR? Sorry for being snappy - still feeling bereft and lost but continuing with futile acts because ... I need to do something I suppose, even though it feels like there is very little point. Thank god for being OCD and needing to finish tasks. But I take no joy in anything at the moment.
Long post starts here - feel free to completely ignore.
Firstly I need to apologise for being so snappy in light of a major setback with regards to future freelance work. After having chased that role for 18 months and worked so hard to put the demo together, it was such a slap in the face, but more so it was the last lead I had opened to me. So to all of you and particularly
@gennepher and
@lindisfel .. I am sorry.
Some context. I worked for 20 years in IBM and finished my time as a respected IT architect by projects and clients but was bullied out of my role and ultimately out of the company by a manager who wanted me to drop down to an IT Specialist role, relocate away from London, and even wanted me to lose my company car and hard earned band-rating and drop me down to a less well paid band below. I was off work with stress for the first time in 20 years at the end, and looking back now, I was clinically depressed at the time.
I took voluntary redundancy much to his rage and I managed to get a job in another outsourcing company but was re-training to be a journalist using the redundancy money and the increased salary to fund it.
I am not going to lie to you - it has been a grind. Over 40 in a young industry is no easy job. I was being rejected right and left for journalism roles so I threw all my efforts into a sports website I created with my best mate from journalism school. I had a role with a tennis live streaming site but the guy there was a bit of a tyrant and I also had a role as an IT Analyst for an IT site and the editor there hated the fact I also did a bit of sport on the side. He bad-mouthed me around the industry and it slammed my confidence a lot.
Ultimately I struck out on my own, and used my own savings to fund the site, and travelling to tournaments in our own right to build up the brand and the site's reputation finally cracking the ultimate in accreditation - getting Britwatch accepted into Wimbledon. I used my own funds and inheritance from both my parents now gone to fund this, but this is not a bottomless pit and now I am just about out of all those funds.
Traditional press HATE website press. And I mean HATE. They feel we have no right at all to be at tournaments and the amount of ... rubbish... I have had to put up with to be at tournaments is phenomenal - and not in a good way.
I freelanced for a while at ESPN and when I landed the freelance role at Sky Sports News I was delighted. However the person I was assigned to decided after 3 days she did not want to train me. So I managed to persuade the managing editor in another part of the business to let me train with his group and had just finished my training and was going to be recommended to his sub-editors for shifts Mon-Wed when COVID hit.
Since then apart from covering a few tournaments for the LTA and doing a couple of articles for British Rowing during Black History Month, I have had nothing else on the work horizon.
I know and respect that people think things will improve and the sun will come out some other day - but that doesn't help when money is tight NOW. Knowing things will improve in March means nothing when I have to determine what I can afford to buy to eat now.
I spent an hour literally crying on the phone to my best friend who's been a constant source of support (in fact to each other as she was made redundant in Feb and qualified for nothing during lockdown) and have spent the last two days doing not much because I haven't slept the last two nights fretting about how to survive this.
I still have no real idea of what to do next, but I can't let the financial situation get away from me like I did through the summer, so today I am going to have to do company admin, personal finances, do a shopping list and really make veggies and tins last for 3 weeks to minimise how much I am spending in a month.
I am sorry if I have offended any of you fine people on here. I will lurk and at some stage when I can actually be bothered, I will chase the surgery for my blood test results and update that sig, and will eventually re-engage here, but for now, I am lost and I have no clue what even to try.
I will eventually update my portfolio and sort through my radio clips, but for now my confidence and my self-belief is gone. Everything feels utterly futile. I have failed in two careers and the simple economic fact is I lack the funds to consider a third.
I am not posting this for people to 'fix' my issues. Right now, like many others, I am more consumed with how will I continue to put food on the table and how will I be able to afford to keep my nice roof over my head. With the greatest of respect to you all, people responding with the security of a job or pension are extremely lucky right now. I am one of many many self-employed directors who are older and greyer than the young emerging workforce that everyone is more focussed on helping. And that adds to the anxiety.
Thanks for reading and sorry again if I offended anyone.