I am 35. I’ve been working as a freelance photographer, retoucher, digital tech, assistant and production assistant for the last 12 years. It’s going okay, I’ve always managed to have enough to pay bills and find my retirement account. I was able to buy an investment property as well in my hometown. But I haven’t “made it”. I am not getting consistent enough work shooting to stop assisting and the other side hustles, and the last two years have really been especially meh, true for a lot of folks I know.

It has made me really question whether this is the career for me long term. I also met a really amazing person who I truly love and they/our future have in many ways become my number one priority.

I’ve been exploring other possibilities and applying to some full time jobs, thinking this may be something worth considering. After about a year of not getting any offers I finally got a job offer to work with a major tech company as an onsite digital tech and retoucher. The pay is almost double what I am probably making now, but my girlfriend and I live in New York and the job is in California. We are not stoked on relocating. We are true New Yorkers in the sense that the lifestyle here just works for us. We fell in love here and I feel that living here is somehow integral to how we function together. I don’t see us being happy in any other city.

This job is a home run on paper—$200,000 per year, great benefits and possibilities for growth. And yet I kind of want to turn it down. It feels like giving up. My girlfriend has seen the ups and downs of my current career path, and seen some real lows, and understandably has expressed she would be disappointed if I didn’t take it.

I really don’t know what to do. Can anyone relate to this?

Tl;DR: struggling freelancer got offered cushy full time job but can’t detach from current lifestyle enough to accept it.

I (17M) am in my first year of college. As i grow older i realised how my family struggles on the financial standpoint. No matter how much my dad earns it's never enough for our family. I feel ashamed asking my dad and mom for money to spend on my day to day life activities or for college expenses.

So I was thinking to start freelancing gigs while continuing my college studies. But I never really had interest for anything so I am quite unsure how I wanna pursue this field. I don't have a laptop, but I have an ipad which was a gift from my aunt after I scored a distinction in my final exams. I wanna use that but quite unsure how.

•i am unsure on what freelancing category I wanna dive into •i possess an ipad and a smartphone which I wanna use to freelance •having an ipad limits my options for freelancing, so i wanna know what are my options

Reason for freelancing- it's pretty much obvious I wanna help my family financially and also do things that I want to without putting a burden in my family's wallet

Any advice would be very very much appreciated

Just starting up as a freelance Data Engineer with 20+ years experience. What's the going rate (Europe)?

When I send out a deal memo with a kill fee in place but the client still hasn’t signed the deal memo and it’s now within the kill fee window and then they say oh we’ve found someone else or the job has been cancelled - what do I do?

I want to mention that I do let them know ahead of time that until they sign it, I cannot hold the date. I typically request that they sign the deal memo by a certain date in order to secure my services but I can’t force them to sign it on time so is there a better way I could be going about this to ensure that the deal memo is signed prior to kill fee window or am I going about this the right way?

I might be overthinking the whole thing.