How did I spend my summer at the sea being a broke freelancer
It was 2015 the end of Spring, beginning of May when the air is pleasant, warm, sunny, a pleasure to spend as much time outside, outdoors when I decided to leave Bucharest to spend all summer at the seaside.
It sounded beautiful, almost a dream, and had become quite achievable because I had gotten rid of the debt of an office job, I was free. In the unconsciousness of that time and the enthusiasm to spend all summer at sea I did not realize that I do not have the necessary financial funds to spend 4 months at sea. And with the last money I rented an apartment in Mangalia, which was properly equipped and furnished to start a new life as a freelancer/entrepreneur. I took some of my stuff to mini storage, the things I didn’t need, and took the rest with me.
Once moved to the seaside, it seemed to me that I was living a dream come true, the beach in the morning, coffee on the beach, fish and shells at the restaurant on the seafront (at least this was happening until the money ran out), what can I say, just freedom.
The whole idea of moving was to start from 0 as a freelancer and continue working at a startup I had been working on since Bucharest in December when I decided to resign and throw myself headlong without thinking twice.
But I didn’t focus too much on work, I was more on vacation: fun, relaxation, beach. Freelancer life is much harder, you need a lot of discipline and seriousness.
And, the more difficult it was for me that everything was new, unknown, without knowing exactly what I was doing or what steps to follow. So I kind of got to work. I started creating my profile on all the freelance platforms of that period. I was so naive, to think that all my experience will actually count for something in this new ground, that I will actually make it, but guess what the experience gathered in corporations, was completely zero, without reviews, active projects, and revenues were all in vain.
All I could do was bid and bid, and the more I auctioned the more chances I had to win a project. I made calculations, strategies about what I know how to do, how much money I can earn. I had reached 8000 USD according to all the calculations. Obviously none of this happened. I managed to get a few projects paid for with a few hundred USD. I was quite disappointed and a little clinically dead knowing that I didn’t make any money anymore, but I didn’t lose my confidence, I didn’t have anything better to do anyway, so I kept bidding.
And since the financial reserves were running out, and I had no other source of income, I said that if I was still at sea I would use nature as a source of food. So the source of food, or rather a protein, were Rapanui and shellfish. I remember how hard it was to clean them of stone, algae, and all that limestone from the shell. If I wanted to prepare them with the shell, and they are the tastiest, you need to clean them very well. I made them with wine and garlic, they were a delight for the taste buds. In the case of the Rapanui, it was simpler, they were taken out of the shell to be cooked. The only problem with them was that at first I didn’t know how to clean them properly and I think I ate what I shouldn’t, but that’s how we learn.
The process was simple: my friend would go with the net and dive after them, and I would prepare them, and in this way I would ensure a healthy and very tasty dinner. Too bad he didn’t find the pearls, it would have been great.
We had incredible walks like power walks from Mangalia to Vama Veche, where we used to enjoy the energy and the atmosphere from there, a lot of young people, very good vibes, and of course we enjoyed eating there, the fish is incredible. Sometimes we used to do this trip along the beach and other times along the road. Both ways it was incredible, I mean 4 hours of clean, salty air, cornfield of poppies, blue sky, perfection. The port from Mangalia is amazing, a lot of ships parked there, I used to take a lot of pictures.
There were some good restaurants in Mangalia and one of them is Callatis, which is actually not as much of a restaurant is more like you go with a tray you choose some food, but in the mornings they used to serve some delicious breakfasts, and I loved the most is the one with peanut butter, the “American Breakfast”, oooh it was my favorite. In my hunt for projects I manage to find some small projects in software quality assurance and things seemed to actually pay off. I remember that I was on the beach and I was stressed about it, the all financial thing and the fact that our investors for the startup cut off so I was not able to enjoy the morning beach which is the most intense and calming.
But I guess that sometimes you need luck and not only perseverance. I managed to work on a project load and performance testing for a client from the UK who paid me more money then I could gain until that time and I was so happy that finally, I can earn my money not being caught by some schedule or boss or all the procedures that I had to follow as an employee. It was like a breakthrough. The struggle was there, I mean all the stress, all the fights with my boyfriend, all the no luck that was somehow following us, but finally, something at least started to get moving. He was actually a professional freelancer in web design, he was doing this for 11 years, but this time he had no luck finding a project at least all the period that we stayed in Mangalia (this will happen at the end of the summer, but I will talk about this later). We used to do our jogging by the beach, around 4 or 5 km until the lighthouse. We used to stay every night to the pontoon, just swimming, watching the moon, the sky, talking, being alive.
We even went to some parade Liberty parade in Venus, I actually dragged him to it, because he did not want to go, it was fun. I am a big fan of jewels and of course I had a couple of earrings and rings with me made of gold, and with that current financial situation, I needed to do a sacrifice to sell them because we had to pay rent and other bills. It was heart heartbreaking for me to sell my jewels. There were 2 particular rings that I liked so much: one with 3 mauve stones, it was a special one, and the other one was wide in the “V” shape. We had a nice restaurant, cheap one on the beach called “La Puiu” where we used to drink our morning coffee sometimes, but other times it was so nice to just buy some stuff from the bakery, buy some cheap coffee from the vending machine and go to the beach and just stay there or on stones and talks and enjoy the nice weather, the sun, the sea the swans.
One day it was Sunday I had a terrible headache, and there was no drug store open so we just went to find in a hotel somebody that has something for my headache, so we find some old couple and they started to talk and talk and told their whole lives about their children, it was so funny. At that time, of course, we eat a lot of unhealthy food bought from Lidl, cheap stuff in general. So the summer was almost ending and the main issue was that we did not have enough money to return to Bucharest to rent an apartment and what was in our thoughts was something like: “Ohh, My God we are going to be homeless, we are going to sleep here on the beach make some shelter and that is it”.
One night we were going out to drink a beer or two and how we stayed there on lounge chairs under the moon and stars, we were just talking: “ What we are going to do? We don’t have enough money to actually get out from here. This all thing with freelance is not actually working so well, I mean we did everything that we could do, but there was not so much luck on our side”. Somehow the desperation was installed because we did not have any backup plan and we needed to leave Mangalia, it was already the end of the summer. And somehow something actually happened one of my clients forgot about the payment so he paid me once again and my boyfriend managed to have something to work on, a website, so put it together we were there with everything almost in place. When I sent all my stuff in Bucharest we did not have an address to fill in because we did not have any idea where are we going to stay so we actually went to the warehouse to pick up my stuff, all my shoes were in plastic bags. We managed to rent an apartment and in a week I was contacted by a director from the UK that he saw my profile and he needs my help with some support for quality assurance. I was working on some small projects but I was so happy I knew that finally, I have some luck. And indeed it was because I had a very good collaboration for almost 2 years, time in which I made a lot of money. So this time spent to the seaside it was a very good one because I managed to deal my fears and succeeded on my own, I developed a lot personally and professionally and sometimes we need to get out from our comfort zone and we will find ourselves into the unknown but in the end, the experience will be very rewarding.
