Weeknote 24 — A gaggle of goodbyes

When I started self employed life, one of the things I was worried about was working by myself. For the 15 years I’ve been permanently employed I’ve loved being part of a team. This was one of the things that always stopped me from going freelance.

Thankfully I haven’t felt that yet. For the last three months I’ve been welcomed into a number of small but perfectly formed teams. Instead of feeling part of one big team, I’ve feel part of a series of micro teams. The variety coupled with the sense of belonging has felt like the perfect combination for me.

I guess it’s similar to working across a number of shorter term projects as part of an agency. It certainly reminds me of my time at Snook.

With one key difference. When it’s time to say goodbye you’re left with nothing.

Saying goodbye to client teams when I worked in an agency was often hard but I was always part of a wider team and that was ultimately where I got my sense of belonging from.

My sense of belonging has now shifted and I’m getting that from the small teams I’m part of for the projects I’m delivering. When these projects finish, like they have recently, that’s taken away.

The organisational queen within me was proud of the fact I’d managed to wrangle multiple projects to finish at around the same time so that I could gift myself a nice chunky break in April. But I’m finding saying goodbye multiple times in a week and extricating myself from several slack spaces and email accounts is emotionally quite hard.

This is also coinciding with the most stressful aspect of self employment for me — scoping new opportunites and lining up work. While my head knows I’ll have work in May and I’ll be a part of some great new teams, maybe rejoining old ones at the right time, it’s hard to feel that right now.

I’m grateful that none of my teams have done that awful thing where they kick you off slack the day you leave. I’m even more grateful to the lovely Zoe Amar and the model she’s designed to ensure freelancers stay a part of her team on an ongoing basis. It’s nice to have an anchor like this.

So in short, goodbyes are hard. Having a period with no one is hard. And I’m left wondering how a self employed holiday will feel different to a permanently employed one.

This will be my final weeknote until I’m back at my desk in May. I’ll be posting a retrospective of Q1 for Joy at some point between now and then, hopefully from a desk in Sicily.

And last, but most importantly, I have no idea what the collective noun for goodbyes is! I’ll change the title if anyone has a better suggestion than gaggle.

Goodbye for now.