2024#

A terribly hard year that was made tolerable thanks to creative work and wonderful encounters! I also feel it was one of those moments in life where the hardships give you a new perspective and force you to change for the better.

Hyper - Ballad#

I don't want to expose her private life, so let's just say my partner had an accident this year. Something that wasn't life threatening, but disabling enough to make everyday life very hard for both of us.

I am used to being a caregiver, but even by my standards, it was too hard. I had to take a step back and admit that taking full care of others was at the expense of my health, my happiness, and my future ; and also a guilt trap I had to exit before it was too late.

It's underway, and I already feel better! I also think it will allow me to grow in unexpected ways and shape a better future for both of us. I'm happy I could find a positive outcome from all this.

I'm still in burnout tho, but my relationship to work is getting better and I should be able to work again soon (see below). I probably have a generalized anxiety disorder and I am also addressing it. Oh and I may have ADHD, so I'll be diagnosed this year. In the meantime, I do lists on cute B7 Japanese notebooks.

Freelancing didn't work out#

I worked as a freelance web developer in April May, September and December, totalling around 8 weeks of work and 20k of revenue before taxes. Which is obviously not enough to make a living.

Despite my best efforts to get the word out (social media, emails, contacts, freelancing platforms, applying to job postings, asking for recommendations) I couldn't find new clients, and for a while I didn't understand why.

Then around November when I was starting to get really nervous, I found out about this French freelance job tracker. I learned from it that the minimum daily rate plummeted in 2024. Only 5% of missions accept full remote work and the rest requires hybrid, closing access to non-local candidates. And 50% of missions are in Paris. Also part-time is non-existent.

There are too many freelancers In early November I was accepted in a "select" freelancing platform. I learned that the acceptation rate was only 10% and despite that, we were 20k registered users, with at least half looking for missions. I also learned that the open, smaller freelancing platforms, had around 200k users, and that the big ones like Malt had over a million. On Malt I only appeared a dozen times in searches each month despite an extensive list of experiences spanning 9 years and in various technologies, plus two recommendations from clients.

That's just my analysis, but I think companies imposed their employees return to office policies on their freelancers to prevent a disparity between workers who, at the surface level, are doing the same job. With the recession and the influx of new freelancers (both confirmed looking for better working conditions, and unemployed new grads), companies regained the upper hand in negotiations.

And so, like that, my goal of going freelance to better my work/life balance was dead. Fortunately, I was offered a new opportunity at a local company I worked for a few years ago. I'll talk about it once all papers are signed, but I have a good feeling about it!

I wrote a few things about web development this year I kept a sane distance with the web dev hype machine, but still enjoyed updating my knowledge around CSS. I asked myself where I should go as a professional, centralized articles questioning the JS frontend paradigm, and partially re-learned React and wrote some notes about it.

Shifting to new projects#

My goal in 2024 was to slowly disengage from responsibilities and projects to have the bandwidth to start new ones that are more in line with my current motivations. I reduced my involvement in non-profit orgs, events, tutoring, social obligations, etc.

Among those, I decided to end my podcast and website about fighting games, Bas Gros Poing, that had been running for 15 years. The team and I had lost motivation, and we thought that closing it properly instead of letting it die was a better outcome, and a symbolic way of moving on. We had a final episode where we exchange stories and anecdotes. We received sweet messages from people who had been following us for years. It was a good ending. And it doesn't mean I don't like fighting games anymore, I just intend to just enjoy them casually (I just went to a tournament this weekend!)

A thing I did not stop this year is drawing. Compared to previous years, I drew a lot! I did a few big pieces that are still unfinished, finally beat Drawtober and grew a lot as an artist. I also wrote a bit more about drawing theory, participated in art gatherings, and registered to expose in a local art fare in 2025.

All year long I wanted to share galleries of my drawings. But having to transfer images to the computer, copy them in a folder, write a page to list them... It bothered me too much. As drawing and drawing adjacent topics will be my main focus in 2025, I started rebuilding my website, this time as a CMS, with Golang and SQlite (so I can learn more backend!). I have ideas to keep the simplicity of text files and avoid admin panel bloat. I'll go into details in another post once I have something to show!

Other notable things#

Did I achieved my 2024 goals?#

Take care of my loved ones
Yes
Go on vacation both alone, and with my partner
No
Continue my personal explorations
Yes
Take action towards curing my anxiety
Yes
Be a responsible self-employed adult
Yes
Update myself on what I missed in web dev, but only one time in the year
Yes
Build bridges between my drawings and my influences to refine my style
No
Be more experimental in my art
Yes
Participate in at least one zine or expo
No
Be even more unproductive on my free time
Yes

2025 Goals#

See you next year!#

A photo of my surrounded by my art. We can see three types of drawing: on pencil, orange, and green
Full size
Initially published: Tue, 14 Jan 2025 00:00:00 UTC
Last modification: Thu, 14 Aug 2025 23:45:59 CEST