Freelancing offers incredible freedom, but it also comes with its challenges. Alongside your creative work, you're managing finances, marketing, client communication, and all the behind-the-scenes tasks that keep your business running. Without a built-in support system, it’s easy to find yourself stretched too thin.

This is freelancer fatigue, and it’s more common than you think. The constant pressure to stay busy, meet client demands, and chase new opportunities can quickly lead to burnout. But the good news? You don’t have to sacrifice your wellbeing for success. Here’s how to break the cycle and build a thriving freelance business, without running yourself into the ground.

With social media increasingly filled with hate and misinformation, political agendas and polarisation slicing through communities and anti-queer rhetoric on the rise, you would think that Phil Douglas, founder and director of Curious Arts, would be despondent, but he’s anything but. 

I find Phil sitting in the corner of an independent café, sipping on a latte and reading the news that the UK government has announced an indefinite ban on puberty blockers for under 18s, impacting those with gender dysphoria - a move that various groups that work with trans youth have criticised. 

This is a first. I’ve worked in PR all of my career and never written about myself.

I’m doing it now as my debut novel, ‘The Stand-Up Mam’, is due to be released on 1st July.

My own story’s got all the ingredients of a good novel - a life or death experience, an unlucky for some 13th birthday trip and an unexpected result at the Edinburgh Fringe.

Let’s start with near-death. A few years ago, I took my daughter Freya to York shopping, on her 13th birthday. Just before we left to return home, I had a pain in my eye as if I’d been stabbed with an huge ice pick.