@Coreyartus I want to give you two answers to your question: the bad and good answer. Basically I am going to tell you a series of horror stories, followed by a sliver of hope at the end of the tunnel.
The Bad Answer: Money.
When I lost my job on the February of this year, I was really crushed. What happened was right before the pandemic and shutdowns started happening statewide, my boss got offended when I greeted him good afternoon instead of good morning. He got incredibly offended because he honestly thought I was commenting on his tardiness, which was absolutely not what I intended to mean. But at the end of the day, I was let go and I drove back to my house in shame.
I am architecture major and I just graduated with a degree this year. Architecture is a grueling program. Absolutely nobody gets any sleep, a lot of pressure is put on you to juggle several classes while having your work done everytime within a span of 24 hours, and it's overall taxing on your money, gas as well as your physical and mental health. I gained a few pounds throughout my 5-year program and I was constantly spending somewhere between $100-$200 a week paying for my own gas or for my projects. I also have sleeping problems from constantly drinking energy drinks to complete projects on time or just staying up late to get a project done within a short deadline.
What's worse is that I also come from a very, very toxic home. My parents have kicked me out of the house several times because of drama that was out of my control. When they fight, they direct their anger at me when I refuse to side or engage in their meaningless issues, or when I am too busy on a project and need to focus on that instead. Either way, I always ended up sleeping in my car or under my desk.
My point being my very egregious lifestyle really ruined my education and I graduated barely surviving all my classes. I developed an anxiety after I graduated because I felt really cheated from my education from being homeless so many times and barely passing my classes without obstacles put in place by my family. I've been diagnosed with PTSD and I regularly have sessions with a professional psychologist about it.
When the pandemic started early in the Summer once I graduated my anxiety was at an all-time high. I started freelancing so I could pay for my expensive classes and commuting. This was when I met my second client on a website called UpWork and I had the biggest ride of my life this year.
A woman approached me offering $60 (yes you heard that right $60) requesting that I illustrate her 30-page children's book. Now you might be wondering why would I be stupid enough to accept such a miniscule request. Well I was still very naive and had not been freelancing for a year. The only thing on my mind at that time was how I was going to be prepared to payback all my student loans once the forebearance ends (which is approaching soon and I still don't have a job or an agency to represent me).
So what I did was I anxiously accepted the offer and pinched any pennies that I got. At the beginning, it was nice because I hadn't drawn cartoons in like forever so it was refereshing to actually do something I've always been passionate about. But as time went on and I went through several revisions, I began to realize how little it was worth to be doing this much work for pennies. When I got my second payment half-way when through the project, all of a sudden my client starts talking about considering to publish their book with my art, and asked if she was required to credit me on the book.
I was furious. I questioned myself thinking if there was any details in our previous conversation that I had missed or overlooked, but no this was actually something she just suddenly thought up. Now, she's not entirely at fault her, there's some accountibility I have to take here. As a rookie freelancer, I did not once think about the importance of asking her what the intentions of the book were at the beginning. Because the price was so low, I reasonably assumed it wasn't a serious project and something she wanted to give to her kids or something. I also didn't realize the importance of a real contract. A lot of this could have been avoided if I did not accept the lowball deal.
Luckily all my work that she approved after it was revised was slapped with a watermark, as I had mentioned in our verbal contract that she would receive all the images without them by time I received my final payment. I approached her diplomatically and explained to her the issues of this and she got offended. This was when I ditched diplomacy and asserted that her behavior was unethical while insulting my professionality, even though we never treated this book like it was a professional project. I eventually left the project (which was my preferred choice) with a portion of the payments I received. I had told her that I would not be refunding any of the money, because I had already submitted work for her book in pieces and that by refunding her I would be sending more bad messages about how freelancing works.
I am really glad how much I've grown as a professional this year. I learned what a realistic budget and price was for a children's book by joining Facebook illustrator groups. I would never accept such an unreasonable price for a project like that again and will always ask the important questions first before jumping into a project.
